- In Canada, several hundred forest fires are still keeping thousands of firefighters on their toes – many of the fires are out of control.
- The effects of the fires are now also being felt in neighboring USA.
- In the metropolis of New York, the air is worse than it has been for decades.
The plumes of hundreds of fires in eastern Canada moved in a southerly direction and led to a dense, foggy veil and a temporary orange coloring of the sky in New York, among other places.
“Mars or Manhattan?” Wrote a Twitter user and published a photo of the skyline including the Empire State Building. A burnt smell was in the air, could be felt in the throat and eyes and caused a headache.
The governor of the state of New York, Kathy Hochul, spoke of an “emergency crisis” and announced that she wanted to distribute one million mouth-nose masks. The extreme situation could last for several days. “People have to prepare for a long period of time.”
“It smells like 9/11”
Manhattan’s Borough Mayor Mark Levine wrote: “Air quality is deteriorating rapidly.” The measured value is “now more than twice as high as the highest level of health risk on the US government scale.”
In the street canyons, not only did visibility decrease significantly, millions of people could also feel the smoke physically. “It smells like 9/11,” commented a New Yorker in memory of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres posted a photo of himself on Twitter, showing him at UN headquarters in front of a New York skyline clearly shrouded in smoke. “At our UN headquarters we can feel the deteriorating air quality as smoke from wildfires in Canada drifts south,” Guterres wrote.
Guterres continued: “With global temperatures rising, there is an urgent need to reduce the risk of wildfires. We must make peace with nature. We can’t give up.”
Comeback of the FFP2 masks
People in New York have been asked to stay indoors as much as possible, avoid strenuous physical activity as much as possible and close the windows.
Legend:
There were significantly fewer people on the streets than usual, many wore the masks known from the pandemic.
Keystone/AP/Andres Kudacki
All outdoor activities in schools and kindergartens have been canceled, and many other open-air events and individual theater performances have also been cancelled.
Lifeguard-supervised swimming on the city’s beaches was canceled, and zoos and libraries closed earlier. The New York Yankees baseball team and the New York Liberty women’s basketball team’s games scheduled for Wednesday have been postponed.