Six Fires Burning This Morning, 22 Put Out Overnight: The Brackets Say Oak Forest, Not Scrub

Twenty-nine open-air fires in a single 24-hour period. That is what the Crisis Management Centre registered up to 7:30am. Of those 29, six are still burning, one is under control and 22 have been put out - meaning firefighters extinguished 22 fires overnight and start the morning back at six.

The list of municipalities burning this morning reads almost like a geography lesson. Studenichani - burning along the Morane – Vrtekica – Ramni Gaber stretch, mixed forest. Makedonski Brod - the Vidush area, near Dragov Dol and Lokvica. Veles - the villages of S'lp and Gorno Selo, where the fire spread toward Dobrino and Tisovica in Zelenikovo. Jegunovce - Kopance and Tudence, spreading toward Bojane in Saraj. Krushevo - Borino and Zhitoshe. Kriva Palanka - Konopnica.

Not all fires are the same, and that is the part nobody mentions

In the official reports it is all called "open-air fire", but the brackets say what actually burned. And there the difference is enormous. Low vegetation and scrub grow back. Oak forest does not.

Near Veles and Zelenikovo what is burning is "oak and hornbeam forest and high-quality oak forest" - that is the wording in the register itself. Near Krushevo two oak forests are burning, one of them already degraded. In Kriva Palanka it is pine. These are not surfaces that return in a season; these are decades of growth removed in a few hours.

The rotation that has run all summer

Put the two days side by side. Two days ago, at 6pm, there were 20 registered fires, 8 of them active, and among those put out were Mogila, Novaci, Bitola, Prilep, Struga, Kichevo, Shtip, Kumanovo, Staro Nagorichane, Tetovo. Today, six active and 22 extinguished in 24 hours.

The numbers differ, but the structure is identical: crews fight fires all day, the count drops overnight, and it climbs again by morning. This is not a run of accidents - it is a condition the country has been living with for weeks, held in check by the same crews with the same equipment.

The two most stubborn hotspots will not leave the list. Studenichani and Makedonski Brod are burning in today's report and in the previous one. Near Krushevo the fire on the Aldanci – Norovo stretch has been brought under control, but the neighbouring Borino – Zhitoshe blaze is still active.

When a country spends weeks publishing tallies that are themselves proof that the fire is not stopping, the question is no longer how many fires were put out yesterday. The question is who is counting the forest that was lost, and what that document says.