Skopje Breathed Smoke From Two Mountains: 21 Fires in One Day, and Vodno Was Clean

On Monday afternoon Skopje got a blanket no urban plan ever accounted for. Thick smoke, the smell of burning, visibility down - and the mountain above the city was clean. The fire wasn't burning in Skopje. Skopje was just breathing it.

The Crisis Management Centre explained the haze was coming from the Kitka fire, burning on the stretch between the municipalities of Studenichani and Zelenikovo, around Morane, Vrtekica and Ramni Gaber, with an arm reaching towards Paligrad and Vrazhale. The second hotspot was on Zheden, in the fields of the village of Bojane. No fire was reported on Vodno - even though Vodno was exactly where you could see best how bad it was.

Stojanche Angelov, head of the Protection and Rescue Directorate, ran a helicopter survey and confirmed part of the smoke was coming from Zheden, where the fire was moving from the Tetovo side towards the Skopje side across terrain that is hard to reach. Tetovo's firefighters joined the operation, backing up the Skopje crews.

By evening there was good news too. The Zheden fire, burning for several days, was brought fully under control. Avni Ameti, commander of the Tetovo fire unit, said around 90 percent of the affected area had been extinguished and the fire had been stopped before it reached forest, vineyards and orchards. That is a concrete result delivered by concrete people who spent an entire day working in hellish conditions.

The numbers show the real size of the problem. According to the Crisis Management Centre's tally at 18:30, the country had 21 open-air fires registered - seven active, two under control, twelve extinguished. Besides Kitka and Zheden, there were fires in Makedonski Brod, near Piperovo in Strumica, near Mitrashinci in Berovo, near Sushica in Petrovec and near Trnovo in Gostivar. Ilinden had two low-vegetation fires, and in Kisela Voda crews put out a burning van.

The smoke comes with a health bill

The Institute of Public Health warned back on 21 August that smoke from open fires carries suspended PM10 and PM2.5 particles, along with gaseous and chemical pollutants that travel considerable distances. The advice is standard and predictable: limit time outdoors, keep windows shut, set air conditioning to recirculate. Extra caution for anyone with chronic respiratory or cardiovascular conditions.

Which makes plain a logic that rarely gets said out loud. A fire burning twenty kilometres from the city is not somebody else's problem - within hours it becomes the problem of a person sitting in a flat in Karposh with the windows shut in August. The line between "a forest fire" and "polluted air in the capital" is as thin as the wind direction at a given altitude.

Containing Zheden brings relief to the western side of the Skopje region. But Kitka stayed active, and the fire season does not end because one hotspot came under control. The question left is not whether the smoke will clear - it will. The question is how many more times this summer Skopje wakes up under the same blanket, and whether anyone is counting the days the city's residents have already spent breathing air the state itself tells them to avoid.