On 21 July the storm tore away part of the summer roof of the pool at the „Boris Trajkovski” sports centre. Pieces fell into the water, near the lanes where there were visitors at that moment. The facility was evacuated.

Ten days later we also know how long the repair will take: the pool will be closed for about two years.

Twelve to eighteen months of construction, plus procedure

Director Daniel Apostolovski says the pool needed urgent work even before the storm. So there will be no partial intervention now - they are going for a full reconstruction, from the machine room to the roof.

The project documentation is finished. A tender to select a contractor will be published shortly. Work is expected to begin in November. According to the documentation, the construction itself should take 12 to 18 months. Add the time for the tender procedure, contractor selection and contract signing - and the realistic closure period is around two years.

This is not the first time the roof has come down

The pool was last reconstructed in 2010. Last year panels fell from the ceiling, and management at the time attributed the cause to poorly executed earlier works. A protective black sheet was installed, and the repair took about five months.

So the chronology looks like this: reconstruction in 2010, ceiling panels falling in 2025 with an explanation that the previous work was bad, a five-month repair, and then summer 2026 - the roof goes off in a storm, with people in the water.

When a building drops pieces on people twice in two consecutive summers, that is not a run of unfortunate circumstances. That is a maintenance history somebody was signing.

Who paid for the first reconstruction

The question worth asking now is not how much the new reconstruction will cost. The tender will show that.

The question is whether anyone has actually opened the documentation from the 2010 reconstruction - who the contractor was, what was agreed, what was paid out, and whether the works were signed off in a report by someone who can now explain their own signature. If the management itself claims the earlier works were substandard, then that claim has an address.

Without that part, a two-year reconstruction is just a new investment in the same building, with the same oversight system that has now failed twice. And then the question is not whether the pool opens in two years - but how long it holds up afterwards.