Twelve Fires in One Day, Three Still Burning: From Mogila to Gevgelija, All of Macedonia Was Alight

Twelve open fires in a single day. Three still active when the Crisis Management Centre closed its daily tally at 6pm. One under control, eight put out. This is now a normal July day in Macedonia, and we keep treating it as news instead of as a season you prepare for in advance.

The active fires are in Probishtip, in the fields of the village of Pleshinci towards Strmosh, where low vegetation, scrub and low forest are burning. Another is near the village of Vince in the Kumanovo area, where dry grass has caught. The third is in the Municipality of Petrovec, on the stretch from Gorno Konjari towards Vince, where the fire has taken hold in dry grass, scrub and a forest belt. The fire above the landfill in Rosoman, in the Kavadarci area, is under control.

The eight extinguished fires map the problem better than any map could. Mogila, between the villages of Srpci and Beranci, where wheat burned. Veles, at Bojadzhiina Cheshma, where dry grass, thorn scrub and vineyards went up. Struga, in two locations. Studenichani. Vrapchishte. Kumanovo, at the Kosturnica Memorial, where pine forest burned too. Gevgelija, on the road from Miravci towards Petrovo. From Mogila to Gevgelija, the whole country in one day.

Notice what is burning: wheat, vineyards, pine forest. That is not just vegetation. That is somebody's year of work and somebody's production. Every one of these fires is a bill that someone will pay, except the bill never appears in any of the press releases.

The emergency services remain in the field and will keep working until the fires are fully contained. That is true and it is necessary. But the intervention is the last link in the chain, not the first. The question no daily bulletin answers is whether anyone cleared dry vegetation before July, whether the firebreaks are maintained, and whether anything flammable should have been sitting above the Rosoman landfill in the first place.

Twelve fires a day get processed as statistics. If you want to know how serious this is, look at how many of these locations repeat summer after summer.