The fire that broke out in the afternoon at Dorutovec near Veles, right next to the petrol station at the entrance to the town, had spread by evening far enough that the smoke swallowed the motorway towards Stip. Not the flames - the smoke. Drivers on that stretch were moving through a grey curtain that cut visibility down to a few dozen metres.

The Directorate for Protection and Rescue scrambled its two „Air Tractor” planes. On the ground: six firefighters from the Veles fire brigade with two vehicles, a water tanker from the „Derven” public utility, and local people from the village of Calosevo. So that is two planes, two vehicles, six men and villagers with shovels - against a fire running towards a main road with the wind behind it.

When the smoke becomes a bigger problem than the fire

The Directorate officially announced that the danger from the fire had been reduced, and in the very same sentence asked the interior ministry for help managing traffic. Those two things do not sit comfortably together. If the danger is reduced, why does the motorway need police? The answer is that the fire line kept spreading despite the intervention - which, translated, means control is partial rather than established.

The number that says the most is not the one from Veles. By 6pm, nine open-air fires had been recorded across the whole of Macedonia. Four of them were still burning. Five had been put out. That is the tally for a single July day - not for the season, for one day.

Every summer the same picture: planes that go up after the fire has already taken hold, firefighters you can count on your fingers, and villagers who are still, in practice, part of the operational plan. The Directorate says the situation is being continuously monitored by the Crisis Management Centre. Monitoring is useful. The question is whether anyone is monitoring the capacity too - how many planes we have, how many vehicles, how many people are on duty on 28 July, when the drought peaks.

For the drivers heading to Stip, all of that is an abstraction anyway. They just watched the motorway disappear into smoke, with fire on the other side of the barrier.