New York plunged into an unbreathable atmosphere due to fires in Quebec

June 7, 2023

The famous Statue of Liberty and “skyline” of Manhattan shrouded in a yellow-orange fog: the forest fires in Quebec have plunged New York, 800 km to the south, into a disturbing and unbreathable atmosphere.

“You can’t even see the Statue of Liberty,” protests Jack Wright from the banks of the East River in Brooklyn. The 76-year-old former lawyer claims he “quit 50 years ago” but says he “coughs” like when he puffs on his cigarettes.

Covid masks are reappearing on the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, like Hugh Hill walking his dog in Central Park, the gigantic green lung of the economic and cultural capital of the United States.

Eyes and throat that “sting”, this 43-year-old lawyer says he does everything not to breathe too much of this air with the acrid smell, characteristic of burnt wood.

“I don’t know if it’s psychological or physical, but I know there are advantages to wearing a mask even if, obviously, it can’t prevent everything,” he confides.

In the center of Manhattan, the financial and business heart of the megalopolis, the atmospheric conditions worsened hour by hour: an increasingly thick yellow-orange fog around the skyscrapers and an almost unbreathable air for the employees. office workers rushing to get something to eat.

Since Tuesday, city and state authorities have been increasing alert messages to make New Yorkers aware of the sudden and unprecedented impact of these fires in Canada, the intensity and frequency of which are linked to the change climatic.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democratic Senate Majority Leader in Washington, said he was “saddened to see that New York City, which traditionally enjoys good air quality, has one of the worst world because of these forest fires” in Quebec, 800 km to the north.

The situation is even worse in the large, upscale, green suburbs north of the Bronx along the Hudson River, where the sky turned yellow-orange-gray on Tuesday and the air scrapes the throat.

According to the National Weather Service, the air quality index has gone from “harmful to “very harmful” and even to “hazardous” in parts of New York State, where all school activities and outdoor extracurriculars are suspended.

“This is not the day to train for the marathon,” warned, with his sense of understatement, the city’s mayor Eric Adams.

According to the government website airnow.gov, the air quality index for New York City reached an all-time high of 413 on a scale of zero to 500 late Wednesday, a record for more than two decades. .

The concentration of PM2.5 micro-particles is at a level more than ten times higher than the standards of the World Health Organization.

Since Tuesday, all of a sudden, the most well-known landmarks — the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the One World Trade Center — no longer stand out as usual under clear blue skies and are shrouded in mist and fumes.

All flights departing from or arriving at New York airports were delayed, a Yankees baseball game against the Chicago White Sox was postponed until Thursday and British comedian Jodie Comer, citing “difficulty breathing ” was replaced after ten minutes for her solo play “Prima Facie” on Broadway.

Hundreds of kilometers to the south, the federal capital Washington has also lived in an acrid smell and under a cloudy sky, with a “harmful” air quality for the most fragile people. As in New York and the state of Maryland, public schools have canceled outdoor activities for children.

For 100 million residents, from Chicago in the northeast to Atlanta in the south, “the air quality in this area is primarily affected by the Canadian fires,” according to the EPA, the environmental protection agency. environment.

For New York alone, everything will depend on the “direction of the winds” but the fumes could last “one to two weeks”, according to the national weather forecast.

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