FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams called it an “unprecedented event.” The state governor, Kathy Hochul, spoke of an “emergency” that could last for a few days. In the afternoon, the White House urged Americans in poorer health to “take precautions.” Deteriorating air quality in New York and other parts of the Northeast Coast and Midwest of the United States due to a blanket of smoke and ash from wildfires in Canada has prompted authorities to urge residents to “stay indoors or wear quality masks.” ” outside.
Some Asian tourists visiting New York say it feels like home. Someone texts me: “Haze Haze Go Away (Haze Haze Go Away), say, when the fumes of Indonesian fires darken the sky (on average once a year)”.
Another day of dangerous particulate matter and acrid stench is expected in New York today, after the city climbed the rankings of the world’s most breathless places in a matter of hours yesterday. The open markets were closed. The one to two hour flight delays to LaGuardia and Newark continued last night; three games, including that between the Yankees and the Chicago White Sox (and one near Brooklyn’s Barklays Stadium), were postponed. Some major Broadway shows, “Hamilton” and “Camelot”, a free production of Hamlet in Central Park, and outdoor shows like the concert that was scheduled to open the summer season at Brookyn’s Prospect Park, have been cancelled. Actress Jodie Comer abruptly left the stage during a Broadway show last night. “I’m having trouble breathing,” he said of the smoke before exiting the scene.
Public libraries also closed earlier, at 3 p.m., and open later today, at 11 a.m. Zoos have done the same out of concern for the animals, staff and visitors.
Gov. Hochul announced that one million N95 masks will be made available, 400,000 of them in New York, in public places like train stations and bus stops.
The phenomenon began in New York on Tuesday, but despite the haze, the reddening sun and data suggesting the city had the second-worst air quality after New Delhi, it occurred on the rooftop of the Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan Years into an event Hundreds of people sipped on margaritas. But yesterday schools scrapped all outdoor activities, including recess, emptied playgrounds and as the sky turned orange after noon, half of passers-by in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood wore a mask.
Beneath the gray blanket shrouding the sky over Washington, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre called the situation “another worrying sign of how the climate crisis is affecting our lives”; announced the dispatch of 600 American firefighters to help Canada, where there are 400 active fires, particularly in Quebec (this year there were 2,293, they burned 3.8 million hectares) and clarified that the 80- year-old President Biden has not yet fired a mask to protect himself.
The public health emergency is related to the high concentration of fine particles (PM 2.5, or particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns, i.e. thousandths of a millimetre), which can penetrate the alveoli of the lungs and potentially diffuse into the blood. In the early afternoon yesterday, concentrations rose in a matter of hours, causing New York’s air quality index to drop from “unhealthy,” with risks particularly for those most at risk (red code), to “dangerous” for all (code brown , the most serious).