North Macedonia, the emergency response system needs changes

The vast fires that have hit North Macedonia in recent weeks have called into question the country's outdated system for responding to emergency situations. A problem made more serious by the lack of resources and personnel

These summer months there are a large number of forest fires throughout North Macedonia, and the consequences are lost human lives and dozens of burned houses in some rural settlements. So far during the summer, the largest area that has burned is on Mount Serta near town Negotino, where it is believed that more than 200 square kilometers of low-stemmed forest were destroyed by the fire, and game and birds suffered.

In the rural areas of the towns of Sveti Nikole and Kumanovo, there were also human casualties and the most damage, where dozens of houses burned down. Houses also burned in the lake resort of Dojran.

The media, which analyzed the situation through the opinions of experts and stakeholders, point out that nothing has changed in the system for dealing with such disasters, even though in 2021 there was a similar situation when thousands of hectares of forest burned in the Maleshevia region. It is believed that the latest fires cause incalculable damage to the eco-system, water, soil, air, agricultural lands and game.

The state agency MIA analyzed the capacities of the fire protection system, i.e. the local firefighting units in cities that intervene on fires in rural areas and forests. For interventions in the forests, employees of the public company/enterprise “National Forests" should intervene first, but they did not do so. The enterprise has a blocked account, so there is no money for fuel for the vehicles. Breaking news in the media was from the National Forests," they sent an email to the Crisis Management Center saying that they would not intervene because they had nothing to go to the field with.

A meeting of most of the institutions related to the disaster prevention sector followed, a decision was made to immediately reorganize the entire system to adequately deal with any crisis. To begin with, it was decided to merge the Center for Crisis Management and the Directorate for Protection and Rescue, to form a special unit for protection and rescue that would initially number about 120 people in North Macedonia, which has 1.8 million people.

"It will be multifunctional, trained for search, search and rescue, i.e. to put out fires in the summer, and to rescue people from the mountains in the winter, and in case of earthquakes, to help find those buried under the ruins," announced Stojanche Angelov, director of The crisis management center.

For extinguishing forest fires in inaccessible terrain, the state currently has three "Air tractors" airplanes of the Directorate for Protection and Rescue, of which only two are operational and in the field. Two army and police helicopters are activated to extinguish fires.

Of the three-firefighting aircraft, two were operational and one was broken. The planes were not used immediately because there was no one to fly them. Retired pilots Stoje Arsovski and Vasko Mikhalchev, with a special permit from the state institutions, returned to operate the planes and put out the fires from the sky.

The law on firefighting determines and regulates the number of firefighters according to the number of inhabitants. Thus, municipalities with up to 10,000 inhabitants should have 9 professional firefighters, while those with over 24,000 inhabitants should have one firefighter per 1,500 inhabitants. But the analysis of the Center for Civil Communications showed that even though there are legal norms, there is a shortage of firefighters in all cities, a total of 340.

The Ministry of Defense allocates money for salaries and salary supplements for 734 firefighters through dedicated subsidies, and for the rest, the finances are provided from the municipal budgets.

Firefighters, apart from being few in number, own many old vehicles, trucks and off-road vehicles, which are mainly second-hand vehicles and donations from foundations or citizens. The state or municipalities rarely provide new firefighting vehicles.

The Center for Civil Communications (CCC) in their regular annual analytics determines that there are currently over 3,000 official vehicles in North Macedonia, all of which were purchased new, while the Ambulance and Fire Department are supplied as donated vehicles.

The last purchase of 12 new ambulances was made in 2018, but they were also purchased with donations from other countries.

Research of the Center for Civil Communications shows that in the 34 firefighting units/cities there are a total of 284 vehicles, of various types – those that extinguish fire, water tankers and vehicles for transporting firefighters and equipment. The average age of all these vehicles is 27 years. From 2020 to June 2023, 29 new vehicles were purchased or received as a donation.

According to the legal regulations, which regulate the number of firefighters according to the number of inhabitants, there is a shortage of 340 firefighters.
Just like in 2021, aircrafts from neighboring Serbia and other countries from the region such as Croatia, Slovenia and Turkey came to help in Macedonia in the past weeks.