Skopje, 6 August 2024 (MIA) – Skopje marks Tuesday the eighth anniversary of the heavy floods caused by torrential rains, leaving 22 people dead and significant material damages. The Skopje region, particularly the villages of Singelikj, Stajkovci, Smilkovski and Arachinovo, in the afternoon on August 6, 2016 was hit by a storm with strong winds. 

“Today marks eight years since the deadly floods that hit the Municipality of Gazi Baba. 22 fellow residents lost their lives and the grief will never end… When everything was falling apart, the light at the end of the tunnel appeared. Many municipalities and towns in Macedonia, many countries and thousands of citizens demonstrated solidarity with our municipality,” Gazi Baba Municipality Mayor Boban Stefkovski wrote in a Facebook post.

He thanked everyone who played a role in handling the consequences from the flood. “Gazi Baba remembers. May it never happen again. Never forget,” he said.

On August 6, 2016, 92.9 litres of rain per square meter fell in Skopje over a 24-hour period. More that 800 thunders were recorded in the first couple of hours when the storm started.

Some thousand citizens were evacuated when the night fell on August 6 after many homes were left without power.

In the aftermath, people from all over the country coordinated by the Red Cross and the crisis HQ as well as the crisis management institutions collected aid for the flood-affected people and settlements. A national day of mourning was declared on August 8 to pay tribute to the victims

The national weather service called the storm “a meteorological phenomenon.” “The record-breaking intensity of the storm that hit the Skopje valley has a probability of happening of 0.1 percent or once in thousand years,” it said back then in its emergency weather report. 

MIA file photo