All three firefighting planes of the Protection and Rescue Directorate were sent up for a single fire. The blaze moving from the Makedonski Brod side towards the Jasen hunting reserve mobilised the country's entire air fleet - which means that for as long as the intervention lasted, every other fire in Macedonia had only ground crews.

Directorate head Stojanče Angelov said the planes were working the fire line while crews inside the reserve tried to stop the spread. He expressed optimism: "We still have a large burn, but I am optimistic that the fire will not enter the Jasen reserve this time because we are hitting it with everything we have."

The sentence worth holding on to

"For now the fire is not that low, but if it gets into the pine forest, what happened to us before could happen again," Angelov warned.

That is a sentence spoken by a man who has already seen the scenario. Pine forest burns differently from grass - fast, high and practically uncontrolled on terrain nobody can reach. The entire strategy today comes down to one thing: hold the fire line while it is still far from the forest belt.

What the week looked like

According to Angelov, more than 40 open-air fires broke out during the week, of which 30 were extinguished and four remained active. In the afternoon hours alone, more than 20 new fires were registered.

The fire on the Macedonian-Kosovar border, which filled Skopje with smoke for several days, has been fully extinguished. "At this moment there is no burning on either the Macedonian or the Kosovar side, and it will not be causing air pollution in Skopje," Angelov said.

The biggest challenge remains the fire near Ramno on Skopska Crna Gora, where a police helicopter also joined the effort. Skopje firefighters, directorate teams and several teams from the national forest service are working on the ground, and the army sent 30 personnel to protect the facility at the Ramno summit.

The fire near Miletino in the municipality of Brvenica flared up again overnight and was brought under control in the early morning hours. Also still active is the fire near Belica in Makedonski Brod, where the terrain is hard to access and in places completely unreachable. The fire near Selci and Lokov weakened during the night but showed signs of burning again in the morning. The fire near Tajmište, in the Kičevo area, is fully under control. The fire near Ruginci in Staro Nagoričane has been put out, and Angelov thanked the crews for it: "Selflessly, exposing themselves to risk, they worked through the night and managed to extinguish that fire, which had covered an enormous area."

Three planes for a whole country

Angelov warned that several difficult days lie ahead and that high temperatures could reignite the hotspots. "A single spark is enough for a real disaster," he said.

The appeal to citizens is fair and it is not a formality - most open-air fires have a human cause. But there is a second part of the bill that does not depend on how careful citizens are. When one fire line ties up all three planes the state owns, that is not an indicator of how big that fire is. It is an indicator of how big the fleet is.