Lightning Set 15 Hectares Alight Near Makresh: Eight People Fought It for Five Hours, Two of Them Ordinary Villagers

One lightning strike, fifteen hectares. That was all it took yesterday near the village of Makresh, in the municipality of Staro Nagorichane, to turn stubble, dry grass and low woodland into ash. Nobody flicked a cigarette butt, nobody torched tyres, nobody burned a field to clear it. Lightning simply struck - and the ground was so dry it finished the job by itself.

Putting it out took from 15:10 to 19:55. Almost five hours. With two fire engines and six firefighters. That is all the Territorial Fire Unit in Staro Nagorichane has to throw at a fifteen-hectare fire. Luckily, two villagers pitched in as well - two men who are not firefighters, have no equipment and get paid nothing for it, but who came out because the flames were closing in on their yards.

Six plus two. Eight people. The arithmetic is brutal once you set it next to the figure of fifteen hectares.

The fire unit reports the blaze is fully contained and extinguished, with no danger of reignition. That is good news and it deserves to be said plainly: the crew did their job. The question isn't about them.

The question is what happens next time the lightning strikes in two places at once, or hits ground further from the village where there are no two volunteers with shovels. This season of high temperatures is only beginning, and the authorities are already appealing to citizens to be careful - which is fair enough, and also slightly ironic in a case where the citizen had no role at all. Lightning doesn't read appeals.

Dry vegetation is what turns a spark into an inferno, and that dryness is no secret. It's known every July. The question left hanging: how many such call-outs can one unit with two vehicles absorb before one of them doesn't end with the words „no danger of reignition”?