New York City Covered in Yellow-Orange Fog Due to Quebec Forest Fires

The famous Statue of Liberty and “skyline” of Manhattan enveloped in a disturbing yellow-orange fog : Quebec forest fires darken New York800 km to the south, and make the air unbreathable for its 8.5 million inhabitants.

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.

Conditions are getting worse

Right in the center of Manhattan, the financial and business heart of the megalopolis, the weather conditions are getting worse hour by hour: an increasingly thick yellow-orange fog around skyscrapers and a almost unbreathable air for office workers rushing to get lunch.

Since Tuesday, city and state authorities have been stepping up alert messages to educate New Yorkers about the sudden and unprecedented impact of these fires in Canada, the intensity and frequency of which are linked to climate change.

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 school suspended

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

According to the governor of the state, Kathy Hochul, the air quality index has gone from “harmful” to “very harmful” and all school activities and outdoor extracurriculars are suspended.

According to IQAir.com, which monitors pollution levels around the world, the air quality index for New York reached a record high of 324 on Wednesday afternoon, on a scale of zero to 500.

The concentration of PM25 micro-particles is at a level more than ten times higher than the standards of the World Health Organization.

New York, but also Washington and Chicago

Since Tuesday, suddenly, the most famous monuments – Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, One World Trade Center tower – no longer stand out as usual under a clear blue sky and are almost hidden in the mist.

All the flights departing from or arriving at New York airports are delayed at best.

Further south, the federal capital Washington woke up to a pungent smell and under a hazy sky, with an air quality that was “harmful” for the most vulnerable people.

As in New York and the state of Maryland, public schools have canceled outdoor activities for children, including sports. According to the EPA, for every 100 million inhabitants, Chicago in the northeast to Atlanta in the south, “the air quality in this area is mainly affected by the Canadian fires”.

Source : © 2023 AFP

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