Twenty-two names were read aloud last night at the „11 Oktomvri” cultural centre in Chento. That is how many people died in the floods that hit the municipality of Gazi Baba in August 2016.

Ten years on, the families sat again in the same hall to hear the names of their own. „Time has not erased the memories, nor has it lessened the grief of the families who lost their dearest. Their pain is our pain too,” wrote the mayor of Gazi Baba, Boban Stefkovski.

He stressed that the commemoration is not only a reminder of a great tragedy, but an act of respect, dignity and gratitude. Plaques of gratitude were awarded to the Interior Ministry, the Army of the Republic of Macedonia, the embassies of the USA, Bulgaria and Turkey, to former Skopje mayor Koce Trajanovski, and to Toni Bojkovski, the Gazi Baba municipal coordinator for the flood response.

What happened on 6 August 2016 in Stajkovci and the surrounding neighbourhoods was not an ordinary summer downpour. The water arrived within minutes, entered the houses, and swept away cars with people inside them. Twenty-two families lost someone that night.

Stefkovski said: „In those days there were no differences. There was only one goal - to save human lives, to help every family, and to bring hope back to the places the flood had left in ruins.”

That is true of those days. The question still hanging ten years later is what changed after them.

The 2016 flood was above all a question of drainage - of riverbeds, channels and systems that did not hold. Ten years is enough time to build infrastructure that prevents a repeat. Has it been built? Every new storm over Skopje brings back the same dread among people in Stajkovci, Singjelikj and Chento, and that dread is not irrational - it is memory.

The plaques of gratitude are deserved. Everyone who went into the water that night earned one. But gratitude towards the rescuers is not the same kind of accountability as the obligation to make sure it never happens again.

The commemoration ended with a message that carries the whole point better than any report: „We will never forget you. May it never happen again.”