Skopje's fire brigade - the defender of a city of nearly half a million people - currently operates with 213 firefighters. By the legal norm for a city this size, the figure should be 384. The gap of 171 firefighters is real, and it's not the product of a temporary staffing dip - it's a chronic deficit that has been dragging on for years.

Brigade Commander Zvonko Tomevski spoke openly about it for the first time at yesterday's Firefighters' Day. "The staffing shortage is chronic. The newest cohort now has 20 fresh recruits who still need to be retrained and trained," he said. That kind of phrasing is the management itself admitting that 20 new people in a generational cycle don't fix the underlying gap.

Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski announced that the equipment is being renewed. One new fire engine and two tankers have been bought and are already in use. That's meaningful. But equipment without the people to operate it is stationary. Skopje still faces a situation where, across much of the city, the effective response time is longer than what is legally acceptable.

The authorities are announcing the formation of a crisis fire headquarters ahead of summer - a joint coordination between municipalities to manage potential forest fires. A solid strategic move, but it doesn't fix the underlying maths. Vehicles on paper aren't the same as vehicles with the staff to run them.

The question that stays open - and that will most likely be answered in the first serious fire of the year - is whether the courage and commitment of the existing 213 firefighters will be enough. That cannot be a long-term strategy. Balkan culture has that bad habit - celebrating the heroism of people forced to work in impossible conditions, instead of demanding the structural fixes that would make their sacrifice unnecessary in the first place.