We will do everything we need to do. We will reopen all the doors of the world and our centers and we will be in coordination with all institutions. I encourage the young children, the injured, that we will not stop here, this is where we start and we will fight until the end, until every scar is healed and every child returns to function and is integrated into society. I have given this not as a guarantee, but as an oath, Kochani Mayor Vladko Grozdanov said at the panel “From experience to solutions, the role of the community, institutions and lessons learned” held in Skopje within the “International Conference on Institutional and Clinical Aspects and Solutions after the Kochani Fire”.
The mayor said that the most important moment was when the state activated the red alert of the European Union, which, in his opinion, was life-saving.
“When I watched the vehicles constantly coming and I wondered, I shouted whether our country already has the capacity and whether we even have as many mechanical ventilation devices as injured children constantly came, some with their own vehicles, some with ambulances. Those few hours, from 6 am to 8-9 am, until the decision was made that they would be deployed to foreign countries, that foreign countries had opened their hospitals for our children, those three hours I didn’t know what else to think. No other thought crossed my mind than that simply with this number coming towards Skopje, how would the country cope. When they announced the news that the European Union’s red alert had been activated, when they announced the news that the world’s centers for accepting children had been opened, it was as if dawn had dawned on me,” said Grozdanov.
The mayor believes that if it hadn’t been for that mechanism, the number of victims would have been twice as high.
