Fifteen open-air fires in a single day. That is what the Crisis Management Centre logged by 18:00 on Monday. Ten were put out, five stayed active. By evening the number had climbed to seven live hotspots across the country.

The worst of it is near Kavadarci. Between the villages of Raec and Ḱesendre, low woodland and dry grass are burning, and the same municipality has a second active fire at Kamen Dol, close to the quarry. Near Prilep the Trizla Teke landfill is alight and spreading in three directions - towards Markovi Kuli, towards the pass by the Bogorodica church and towards the Tri Bagremi site. There are also active fires at the landfill in Bukovo in the municipality of Ohrid, in the fields around the village of Jakrenovo near Kruševo, near the village of Sirkovo in Rosoman, and between the villages of Karbinci and Balvan.

Landfill, landfill, stubble

Read the list again and count how many times the word "landfill" appears. Prilep - landfill. Ohrid - landfill. Vasilevo - dry grass, stubble and an illegal dump. This is not a forest fire in untouched nature. This is waste burning, in places where waste should never have been.

Fires were extinguished in the municipalities of Butel, Šuto Orizari, Bitola, Veles, Brvenica, Kumanovo, Staro Nagoričane, Lipkovo and Makedonski Brod. So in one afternoon - from Bitola to Kumanovo, from Lipkovo to Veles. That is not a local accident. That is the state of an entire country on one August day.

The appeal that repeats every summer

The crisis centre is urging people to be careful and not to light fires in the open, on stubble, on waste or on dry vegetation. The appeal is accurate and necessary. It is also the only tool that ever appears in the press releases.

Firefighting crews are in the field battling the blaze. Near Kavadarci the work continues through the night. Those people are doing their part. The question is who does the part that comes before the fire - clearing the illegal dumps, mowing the stubble along the roads, watching over the sites where the same spot burns every summer. The Trizla Teke fire was not the first there this week.

Every summer the same list of municipalities, every summer the same appeal, every summer the same landfills. How many times does one and the same place have to burn before it stops being called an "unpredictable disaster"?