An earthquake measuring magnitude 3.5 on the Richter scale was felt in Skopje on 23 May at 17:41. The epicenter - 21 kilometers east of the city, at a depth of 5 kilometers. According to the Seismological Observatory at the PMF in Skopje, the intensity was at level IV on the European macroseismic scale.

For anyone who felt it, this was a reminder that Macedonian soil is never fully still. The Skopje basin is a seismically active region. Historically, the city has already been destroyed once by an earthquake - in 1963, magnitude 6.1, more than 1,000 dead, the whole city rebuilt from scratch.

3.5 is not a serious quake. No damage is expected. But 3.5 is still enough to trigger a reaction - glasses slide across the table, chandeliers sway, nerves tighten. Especially in neighborhoods where buildings went up before the 1980s, without modern seismic standards.

For the people of Skopje this is the moment for a basic check: do your evacuation routes still hold up, do you have an emergency bag, do you know where you'd go if a serious quake hit. All these questions feel irritating when nothing is happening. Until something does. And by then it's too late to answer them.

The Institute of Earthquake Engineering has long warned about the risk posed by buildings from the 50s and 60s in central Skopje. The question that goes unanswered right now: are these 3.5 degrees the start of a serious seismic stretch, or just an ordinary event? Seismologists don't have predictive ability at that level of precision. What they have is repeatable analysis and early-detection systems. That's what's available to us at this point. The rest is statistics and caution.