By 18:00 yesterday, the Crisis Management Centre had registered five fires in open spaces. One was active, one had been brought under control and three had been put out. The picture these numbers paint is less "fire season" and more a question about waste: three of the five fires were burning rubbish.

Still active was the fire in the Municipality of Želino, near Karpalak, beside the Skopje-Tetovo road, where rubbish is burning. The fire on Skopska Crna Gora above the village of Aračinovo, where part of a low, degraded forest was burning, was brought under control. Put out were a fire behind the Industrial School in Prilep, where dry grass was burning, and two rubbish fires in Skopje: on "Aleksandar Makedonski" Boulevard in Gazi Baba and on "Skupi" Street in Karpoš.

Heaps of rubbish on a boulevard and a street in the capital are not a natural disaster. First someone dumped them there, then something set them alight, and the smoke is breathed in by the people who live nearby. Every one of those call-outs means a fire crew that isn't somewhere else at that moment.

The question for the municipalities of Gazi Baba, Karpoš and Želino is a simple one: how long had that rubbish been sitting there before it caught fire, and whose job was it to take it away?