Shtip has been without drinking water since 14:00. The filter station disconnected from the pipeline of the Zletovica water system because the water arriving from the Knezhevo dam is too heavy to process - and not by a little.

The number that explains everything came from the director of the public utility Isar, Aleksandar Arsovski, at an emergency press conference: "We are able to process turbid water with parameters of around 50 NTU, and at the moment we are receiving turbid water with over 400 NTU."

Eight times over capacity. Not ten percent over, not fifty - eight times. The cause was last night's storm across the Probishtip region, after which the Zletovica system is struggling both to operate and to supply raw water to all the municipalities that depend on it.

The trouble started in the morning. That is when the utility asked residents to use water sparingly because of the power cuts and the storm damage. A few hours later the situation worsened and processing stopped entirely.

Asked when the supply would return to normal, Arsovski said it would be unfair to say. With a system whose endurance threshold has been breached eightfold, there is not much else he could say.

Here is the point worth keeping once the water comes back. One summer storm - intense, but hardly an unprecedented event in the Balkans - is enough to leave a city of over forty thousand people without drinking water for an undefined period. Zletovica also supplies Probishtip, Sveti Nikole and Karbinci, where problems are likewise possible.

The system was built to carry water to several municipalities. Was it built to carry a storm as well? That is the question nobody asks while it is still running from the tap.

The utility is asking for understanding and patience. The people of Shtip will probably offer both. The question is whether anyone will raise that 50 NTU threshold before the next storm, or whether next August we will be reading the same emergency press conference with the same numbers.