The Statue of Liberty and the skyscrapers of Manhattan enveloped in an orange and brown fog: the forest fires in Quebec obscure the famous “skyline” of New York on Wednesday and make the air very difficult to breathe for its 8.5 million of inhabitants.
COVID-19 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.
His eyes and throat “stinging”, this 43-year-old lawyer says he does everything not to breathe too much of this air with its acrid smell, characteristic of burnt wood.
“I don’t know if it’s psychological or physical, but I know that there are advantages to wearing a mask even if, obviously, it can’t prevent everything,” he confides.
Since the start of the week, authorities in the city and state of New York have multiplied alert messages and started distributing masks.
“One of the worst” air qualities “in the world”
“I am saddened today to see that New York City, which usually enjoys good air quality, has one of the worst in the world because of these wildfires” in Canada, s New York Senator Chuck Schumer is alarmed, speaking Wednesday from the Senate in Washington, where he leads the Democratic majority.
The situation is even worse in the large, green, upscale suburbs north of New York along the Hudson River, where the sky turns yellow-orange-gray and the air scrapes your throat.
According to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, the air quality index on Wednesday dropped from “harmful to “very harmful” and all outdoor school and extracurricular activities were suspended or suspended. limited to what is strictly necessary”.
“This is not the day to train for the marathon,” warned, with his sense of understatement, the mayor of the city, Eric Adams.
According to the IQAir.com site, which monitors pollution levels across the planet, the index for New York reached “158”, with a concentration of PM2.5 microparticles at a level 14 times higher than the standards of the World Health Organization.
“Breathing smoke”
Tuesday evening, this index reached “218”, a record.
New York’s most famous landmarks – the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and One World Trade Center – no longer stand out as usual under clear blue skies.
“Yesterday, when I came home from my lessons, I was breathing in smoke”, testifies Evangelia Antonakos, a 47-year-old mathematics teacher, accompanied by her 5-year-old child also wearing a mask.
Further south, the federal capital, Washington, also woke up Wednesday to a pungent smell and to hazy skies despite sunny weather.
“The air quality today will be harmful to the health of people with heart or respiratory disease, the elderly, children and adolescents,” according to local authorities.
As in New York and the state of Maryland, public schools have canceled outdoor activities for children, including sports.
The air quality index in Washington was 199 Wednesday morning – on a scale from zero to 500 – a level considered “harmful” and expected to persist Thursday.
And according to the site fire.airnow.gov, tens of millions of inhabitants of the northeastern and eastern United States (New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc.) are subjected this week to very poor air quality.