After 72 hours and three sleepless nights, the Pelister fire is under control - but the model that success rests on cannot hold

Seventy-two hours of continuous work on the ground and three nights on the fire line. That is what it took to bring the Pelister fire under control, according to the Pelister National Park public institution.

Director Ivancho Toshevski describes it as one of the most complex fires of the season in the country - forest dominated by black and Macedonian pine, terrain that is hard to reach, and unfavourable weather. The black pine on Pelister is not ordinary woodland. Macedonian pine grows there in a way it grows almost nowhere else in the Balkans.

Who was on the ground

The list of participants shows how serious the operation was. Units of the Pelister National Park, the territorial fire brigades from Bitola and Resen, machinery from the public utilities of the Bitola municipality and the Strezhevo public enterprise, firefighting forces of the Protection and Rescue Directorate, the Arhangel and Kochani volunteer fire brigades, army helicopters from the Air Wing and the Directorate's air tractors.

Plus something that rarely makes it into official statements - a large number of private business owners and volunteers, on the ground without a break.

The National Park points out that coordinating that many forces in a relatively small area, on inaccessible terrain, while ground and air operations ran simultaneously, was an exceptionally serious challenge. A good part of the crews stayed awake for more than 48 hours.

"The impossible became possible" - and that is exactly the problem

The sentence in the statement reads: "The impossible became possible because everyone was on the ground without a break." That is honest and deserved. It is also a description of a system that works by wearing people out rather than through equipment and planning.

When success depends on volunteers who have not slept for two days, that is not a model you can repeat every summer. And a summer with fires on Pelister is no longer the exception.

The National Park thanked the Directorate's head, Stojanche Angelov, for the support and coordination of the additional forces, and appealed to the public to behave responsibly in nature so that new fires can be prevented.

Pelister was saved this time. The question the statements do not ask is how many more times it can be saved this way.