By JENNIFER PELTZ and ROB GILLIES
AP
With weather systems expected to hardly budge, the smoky blanket billowing across the U.S. and Canada from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia should persist on Thursday and possibly into the weekend. (June 8)
today
NEW YORK (AP) — Images of smoke obscuring the New York skyline and the Washington Monument this week have given the world a new picture of the perils of wildfire, far from where blazes regularly turn skies into hazardous haze.
A third day of unhealthy air from Canadian wildfires may have been an unnerving novelty for millions of people on the U.S. East Coast, but it was a reminder of conditions routinely troubling the country’s West — and a wake-up call about the future, scientists say.
“This is kind of an astounding event” but likely to become more common amid global warming, said Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth College geography professor and climate scientist. “This is something that we, as the eastern side of the country, need to take quite seriously.”
Millions of residents could see that for themselves Thursday. The conditions sent asthma sufferers to hospitals, delayed flights, postponed ballgames and even pushed back a White House Pride Month celebration. The fires sent plumes of fine particulate matter as far away as North Carolina and northern Europe and parked clumps of air rated unhealthy or worse over the heavily populated Eastern Seaboard.
At points this week, air quality in places including New York, the nation’s most populous city, nearly hit the top of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air-pollution scale. Local officials urged people to stay indoors as much as possible and wear face masks when they venture out.
Such conditions are nothing new — indeed, increasingly frequent — on the U.S. West Coast, where residents were buying masks and air filters even before the coronavirus pandemic and have become accustomed to checking air quality daily in summertime. Since 2017, California has seen eight of its 10 largest wildfires and six of the most destructive.
The hazardous air has sometimes forced children, older adults and people with asthma and other respiratory conditions to stay indoors for weeks at a time. Officials have opened smoke shelters for people who are homeless or who might not have access to clean indoor air.
So what’s the big deal about the smoke out East?
“The West has always burned, as has Canada, but what’s important now is that we’re getting these massive amounts of smoke in a very populated region, so many, many people are getting affected,” said Loretta Mickley, the co-leader of Harvard University’s Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group.
Fueled by an unusually dry and warm period in spring, the Canadian fire season that is just getting started could well become the worst on record. More than 400 blazes burned Thursday. Over a third are in Quebec, where Public Safety Minister François Bonnardel said no rain is expected until next week and temperatures are predicted to rise.
He said there have been no reports of injuries, deaths or home damage so far from the fires, but it remained unclear Thursday when more than 12,000 evacuees from various communities would be able to return. Manon Cyr, mayor of the evacuated town of Chibougamau, said she advised residents to be “Zen and patient. That’s the most important.”
But, she noted, the real solution will be a good dose of rain.
In neighboring Ontario, a haze hung over Toronto, Canada’s most populous city, where many school recess breaks, day care center activities and outdoor recreation programs were canceled or moved inside.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday that hundreds of American firefighters and support personnel have been in Canada since May, and that he’d offered Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “any additional help Canada needs to rapidly accelerate the effort to put out these fires.” The two spoke Wednesday.
Wildfires aren’t the only air-quality problems that beset major population centers around the globe.
In Beijing, for example, decades of sandstorms blowing in from the Mongolian plains have mixed with human-made pollution, sometimes making neighboring buildings invisible to one another. Commuters have even been spotted walking down streets wearing plastic bags over their heads to insulate against particulates.
Many African countries in and near the Sahara Desert, too, regularly grapple with bad air mainly because of sandstorms. Senegal, in particular, has endured years of unsafe levels of air pollution, which is causing asthma and other respiratory diseases, climate experts say.
Chemically, wildfire smoke can be more toxic than typical urban pollution, but with an asterisk: With smog, “the problem is you’re in it all the time,” says Jonathan Deason, an environmental and energy management professor George Washington University.
In New York City, Health Department spokesperson Pedro Frisneda said emergency rooms were seeing a “higher than usual” number of asthma-related visits from the blanket of smoke, estimating patients were in the “low hundreds.”
The city public school system — the nation’s largest — said Friday’s classes would be conducted remotely, a decision that mostly affected high schoolers because most other pupils already had a scheduled day off. Motorists even got a break Thursday and Friday from having to move their cars for street cleaning.
In Washington, a big Pride Month celebration on the White House’s South Lawn was moved from Thursday to Saturday, and a Washington Nationals-Arizona Diamondbacks game was postponed. Local officials closed public parks and suspended some road work.
Philadelphia ended trash collection ended early, for the sake of sanitation employees. Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city, opened spaces usually used as hot-weather cooling centers so that residents could escape the unhealthy air.
A Chris Stapleton concert at a Syracuse amphitheater was pushed back, fireworks were canceled at Niagara Falls and racing was canceled at New York’s Belmont Park two days before the famed Belmont Stakes. It wasn’t yet clear whether the Triple Crown race itself might be affected; Gov. Kathy Hochul said that would depend on the air quality at the track Saturday.
And in central Pennsylvania, Country Meadows Retirement Communities temporarily closed walking areas and outdoor courtyards designated for residents in secured memory support units — “they may or may not recognize when they experience respiratory distress,” explained company spokesperson Kelly Kuntz. All 2,300 residents of its 10 facilities were asked to cancel outdoor trips and strenuous outdoor activities.
“Bocce is huge,” Kuntz said. “No bocce ball until this is done.”
Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press journalists Michael Hill in Albany, New York; Ashraf Khalil and Seung Min Kim in Washington; Gene Johnson in Seattle; Sam Mednick in Dakar, Senegal; Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco; Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Ted Anthony in New York; and Shelley Adler in Fairfax, Virginia, contributed to this report.
A third day of unhealthy air from Canadian wildfires may have been an unnerving novelty for millions of people on the U.S. East Coast, but it was a reminder of conditions routinely troubling the country’s West — and a wake-up call about the future, scientists say.
“This is kind of an astounding event” but likely to become more common amid global warming, said Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth College geography professor and climate scientist. “This is something that we, as the eastern side of the country, need to take quite seriously.”
Millions of residents could see that for themselves Thursday. The conditions sent asthma sufferers to hospitals, delayed flights, postponed ballgames and even pushed back a White House Pride Month celebration. The fires sent plumes of fine particulate matter as far away as North Carolina and northern Europe and parked clumps of air rated unhealthy or worse over the heavily populated Eastern Seaboard.
At points this week, air quality in places including New York, the nation’s most populous city, nearly hit the top of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air-pollution scale. Local officials urged people to stay indoors as much as possible and wear face masks when they venture out.
Such conditions are nothing new — indeed, increasingly frequent — on the U.S. West Coast, where residents were buying masks and air filters even before the coronavirus pandemic and have become accustomed to checking air quality daily in summertime. Since 2017, California has seen eight of its 10 largest wildfires and six of the most destructive.
The hazardous air has sometimes forced children, older adults and people with asthma and other respiratory conditions to stay indoors for weeks at a time. Officials have opened smoke shelters for people who are homeless or who might not have access to clean indoor air.
So what’s the big deal about the smoke out East?
“The West has always burned, as has Canada, but what’s important now is that we’re getting these massive amounts of smoke in a very populated region, so many, many people are getting affected,” said Loretta Mickley, the co-leader of Harvard University’s Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group.
Fueled by an unusually dry and warm period in spring, the Canadian fire season that is just getting started could well become the worst on record. More than 400 blazes burned Thursday. Over a third are in Quebec, where Public Safety Minister François Bonnardel said no rain is expected until next week and temperatures are predicted to rise.
He said there have been no reports of injuries, deaths or home damage so far from the fires, but it remained unclear Thursday when more than 12,000 evacuees from various communities would be able to return. Manon Cyr, mayor of the evacuated town of Chibougamau, said she advised residents to be “Zen and patient. That’s the most important.”
But, she noted, the real solution will be a good dose of rain.
In neighboring Ontario, a haze hung over Toronto, Canada’s most populous city, where many school recess breaks, day care center activities and outdoor recreation programs were canceled or moved inside.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday that hundreds of American firefighters and support personnel have been in Canada since May, and that he’d offered Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “any additional help Canada needs to rapidly accelerate the effort to put out these fires.” The two spoke Wednesday.
Wildfires aren’t the only air-quality problems that beset major population centers around the globe.
In Beijing, for example, decades of sandstorms blowing in from the Mongolian plains have mixed with human-made pollution, sometimes making neighboring buildings invisible to one another. Commuters have even been spotted walking down streets wearing plastic bags over their heads to insulate against particulates.
Many African countries in and near the Sahara Desert, too, regularly grapple with bad air mainly because of sandstorms. Senegal, in particular, has endured years of unsafe levels of air pollution, which is causing asthma and other respiratory diseases, climate experts say.
Chemically, wildfire smoke can be more toxic than typical urban pollution, but with an asterisk: With smog, “the problem is you’re in it all the time,” says Jonathan Deason, an environmental and energy management professor George Washington University.
In New York City, Health Department spokesperson Pedro Frisneda said emergency rooms were seeing a “higher than usual” number of asthma-related visits from the blanket of smoke, estimating patients were in the “low hundreds.”
The city public school system — the nation’s largest — said Friday’s classes would be conducted remotely, a decision that mostly affected high schoolers because most other pupils already had a scheduled day off. Motorists even got a break Thursday and Friday from having to move their cars for street cleaning.
In Washington, a big Pride Month celebration on the White House’s South Lawn was moved from Thursday to Saturday, and a Washington Nationals-Arizona Diamondbacks game was postponed. Local officials closed public parks and suspended some road work.
Philadelphia ended trash collection ended early, for the sake of sanitation employees. Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city, opened spaces usually used as hot-weather cooling centers so that residents could escape the unhealthy air.
A Chris Stapleton concert at a Syracuse amphitheater was pushed back, fireworks were canceled at Niagara Falls and racing was canceled at New York’s Belmont Park two days before the famed Belmont Stakes. It wasn’t yet clear whether the Triple Crown race itself might be affected; Gov. Kathy Hochul said that would depend on the air quality at the track Saturday.
And in central Pennsylvania, Country Meadows Retirement Communities temporarily closed walking areas and outdoor courtyards designated for residents in secured memory support units — “they may or may not recognize when they experience respiratory distress,” explained company spokesperson Kelly Kuntz. All 2,300 residents of its 10 facilities were asked to cancel outdoor trips and strenuous outdoor activities.
“Bocce is huge,” Kuntz said. “No bocce ball until this is done.”
Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press journalists Michael Hill in Albany, New York; Ashraf Khalil and Seung Min Kim in Washington; Gene Johnson in Seattle; Sam Mednick in Dakar, Senegal; Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco; Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Ted Anthony in New York; and Shelley Adler in Fairfax, Virginia, contributed to this report.
Hochul, Murphy urge people to mask-up, stay inside
With weather systems expected to hardly budge, the smoky blanket billowing across the U.S. and Canada from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia should persist on Thursday and possibly into the weekend. (June 8)
(Production: Vanessa A. Alvarez)
‘EH!POCALYPSE NOW!’ Americans blame Canada as haze from northern fires continues
By ROB GILLIES
AP
yesterday
Masons work during hazy conditions in Philadelphia, Wednesday, June 7, 2023. The haze from Canada's wildfires is taking its toll on outdoor workers along the Eastern U.S. who carried on with their jobs even as dystopian orange skies forced the cancelation of sports events, school field trips and Broadway plays. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
TORONTO (AP) — The front page headline of the New York Post screamed “BLAME CANADA!” The Boston Herald has “Thanks Canada,” and the Dallas Morning News front page said “U.S. caught in a Canadian haze.”
A thick, hazardous haze of wildfire smoke loomed over daily life this week for millions of people across the U.S. and Canada from over 400 Canadian wildfires. Canadians are unaccustomed to getting the attention of millions of Americans, let alone drawing their ire.
Americans quickly poked fun as the smoke-clogged air eerily silhouetted skylines in New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
The New York Post also used the headline “EH!POCALYPSE NOW” in reference to Canadians’ frequent use of the word “Eh” and went on to say “It’s the unhealthiest thing to come out of Canada since poutine.” Poutine is the popular dish north of the border of french fries, cheese and gravy.
“Sorry!,” Canadian meteorologist Anthony Farnell tweeted in response to the Post headline.
American composer Marc Shaiman rewrote his tongue-in-cheek song he co-wrote for the cartoon South Park, “Blame Canada.”
“Blame Canada! Shame on Canada! For the fog and the smog, the haze from the blaze. The Ontario smoke that is making us choke,” he sang.
Nelson Wiseman, a political scientist at the University of Toronto visiting upstate New York this week, said his wife heard an unusual theory from one American.
“A U.S. truck driver told my spouse yesterday that the wildfires are a product of Canadians caring more about protecting wildlife than managing their forests,” he said.
Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said some people on social media quipped that, finally, Americans will know where Canada is on the map.
“My comment to a friend was, they’re so excited they even got the provinces right,” said Robert Bothwell, a Canadian historian.
TORONTO (AP) — The front page headline of the New York Post screamed “BLAME CANADA!” The Boston Herald has “Thanks Canada,” and the Dallas Morning News front page said “U.S. caught in a Canadian haze.”
A thick, hazardous haze of wildfire smoke loomed over daily life this week for millions of people across the U.S. and Canada from over 400 Canadian wildfires. Canadians are unaccustomed to getting the attention of millions of Americans, let alone drawing their ire.
Americans quickly poked fun as the smoke-clogged air eerily silhouetted skylines in New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
The New York Post also used the headline “EH!POCALYPSE NOW” in reference to Canadians’ frequent use of the word “Eh” and went on to say “It’s the unhealthiest thing to come out of Canada since poutine.” Poutine is the popular dish north of the border of french fries, cheese and gravy.
“Sorry!,” Canadian meteorologist Anthony Farnell tweeted in response to the Post headline.
American composer Marc Shaiman rewrote his tongue-in-cheek song he co-wrote for the cartoon South Park, “Blame Canada.”
“Blame Canada! Shame on Canada! For the fog and the smog, the haze from the blaze. The Ontario smoke that is making us choke,” he sang.
Nelson Wiseman, a political scientist at the University of Toronto visiting upstate New York this week, said his wife heard an unusual theory from one American.
“A U.S. truck driver told my spouse yesterday that the wildfires are a product of Canadians caring more about protecting wildlife than managing their forests,” he said.
Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said some people on social media quipped that, finally, Americans will know where Canada is on the map.
“My comment to a friend was, they’re so excited they even got the provinces right,” said Robert Bothwell, a Canadian historian.
Smoke from wildfires, a fact of life in the West, catches outdoor workers off guard in the East
By ALEXANDRA OLSON and WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS
By ALEXANDRA OLSON and WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS
AP
“We are taking all these risks and still what we are making is barely enough to survive so we can’t afford to miss work for even one day,” said Jhale, who spoke in Hindi through a translator from the Justice for App Workers organization.
Grubhub alerted drivers that they would not be penalized if they didn’t feel safe completing deliveries and reminded those with pre-existing conditions to stay inside, a company spokesperson said.
In recent years labor agencies in California, Oregon and Washington have adopted rules requiring employers to provide protection from wildfire smoke, including N95 respirators, breaks and sometimes moving operations indoors. California Gov. Gavin Newsom passed a bill in 2021 allowing farmworkers access to the state’s stockpile of N95 masks.
While wildfire smoke has traveled across the continent to the East Coast in the past, conditions this week were particularly severe. There is little official guidance in the East related to wildfires and there are no such specific standards at the federal level, though employers must protect workers from wildfire smoke under general laws requiring safe work sites.
There are potential long- and short-term financial and health ramifications for workers. A study last year found that every day of exposure to drifting wildfire smoke can reduce workers’ quarterly earnings by 0.1% — a toll that comes to $125 billion a year in lost income.
“One thing that seems really clear from our research is that the effects of smoke on labor earnings or labor market incomes will extend past the days in which the smoke is bad,” said Mark Borgschulte, one of the study’s authors and an assistant professor in economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “You can see people having heart attacks on days when air pollution is bad. That’s going to affect them for a long periods of time.”
Wildfire smoke contains hundreds of chemical compounds, experts note. In the short term, vulnerable people can be hospitalized and sometimes die from excessive smoke. Scientists have also linked smoke exposure with long-term health problems including decreased lung function, weakened immune systems and higher rates of flu.
Even when rules are in place, labor activists say getting companies to comply is another matter.
Tony Cardwell, president of the country’s third-largest railroad union, said he has clashed with rail companies over protections for workers in California even after new wildfire rules were place. He said the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division, which represents track maintenance workers, is sending emails this week to railroads operating in the East to seek protections, including air quality monitoring and rescheduling work.
Amtrak said it made N-95 and KN95 masks available to all employees, and in areas were where the air quality is considered hazardous, the company postponed non-critical work that requires employees to be outdoors. Norfolk Southern is conducting air monitoring and providing workers with N95 masks where needed, spokesperson Connor Spielmaker said.
Other companies scrambled to take similar steps.
Ground crews for Delta Air Lines are coming indoors in between aircraft turns, the time between when a plane pulls up to the gate and the next flight pushes back, said company spokesman Morgan Durrant.
Alex Kopp, safety director for The Association of Union Contractors, which represents 1,800 construction contractors, said the group was “concerned that air quality will have an effect on jobsite safety” and urged members to take precautions. But he acknowledged that “the current air quality certainly presents a new challenge.”
Local 3 IBEW, an AFL-CIO affiliated union representing electrical workers in New York, said it received reports of only two jobs sites closing Wednesday due to air quality issues despite public warnings to remain indoors, though some contractors are requiring masks.
Many workers were left to navigate the threat on their own.
Victor Aucapina, a construction worker doing a home renovation in Brooklyn, pulled his T-shirt over his nose between bites as he sat on a curb during a lunch break. Aucapina said he opted to keep his two young children home from school Wednesday but said he couldn’t miss work as his family’s sole breadwinner.
He was caught off guard as skies grew more yellow by lunchtime and winds carried with them the scent of burning trees.
“I didn’t think it would so bad. Now I feel the smoke, the smell,” said Aucapina, who added that he may bring a respirator if conditions don’t improve but missing work would “be a last resort.”
Wildfires of this size are so novel in the East, many workers did not immediately grasp the threat.
Warren Duckett didn’t realize anything was wrong when he set out for his construction job in Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning and heard about the wildfires on the radio. Soon, one co-worker was on his way home suffering from smoke-related sinus issues, but Duckett pushed on.
“We thought it was just a foggy morning,” Duckett said.
Duckett was hopeful that the skies would clear in the afternoon, but as in New York, that was not the case.
Conditions worsened in the country’s capital Thursday as air quality warnings deteriorated from “Code Red,” to “Code Purple.”
____
Associated Press Writer David Koenig in Dallas and Paul Wiseman in Washington, D.C. contributed to this story. Grantham-Philips reported from Washington, D.C.
yesterday
NEW YORK (AP) — The hazardous haze from Canada’s wildfires is taking its toll on people whose jobs have forced them outdoors along the U.S. East Coast even as a dystopian orange hue led to the cancelation of sports events, school field trips and Broadway plays.
Delivery workers, construction workers, farm laborers and railroad and airport employees on the West Coast have become all too familiar with the hazards that come with massive wildfires. Yet in the East a sun jaundiced by smoke is so novel, many workers had no idea what was happening.
Some, unprepared for the effects of smoke inhalation, left their jobs midday unable to carry on as the air quality worsened. Most, however, pushed through in the hopes that the skies would clear.
They haven’t.
A laggardly weather system has settled over the region and the smoky blanket billowing from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia continued Thursday, and may persist into the weekend.
New York City Public Schools announced Thursday that classes on Friday will switch to remote instruction. Most elementary and middle schools were scheduled to be off for a clerical day, however. In Philadelphia, the city suspended trash collection and street cleaning and repairs to protect workers from the pollution.
Some companies provided N-95 masks and allowed employees to take breaks indoors but labor rights groups pushed for more protections, replaying a years-long struggle that began in California and other Western states.
Food delivery workers on bicycles and scooters crisscrossed the streets of New York City even though a “Code Red” alert remained in place Thursday.
Bimal Jhale, 43, tried to set out on his scooter to make deliveries for Grubhub on Wednesday afternoon but was already dizzy after working as cook in a diner that morning. By evening Jhale, father of a 5-year-old boy, had recovered somewhat and tried again.
NEW YORK (AP) — The hazardous haze from Canada’s wildfires is taking its toll on people whose jobs have forced them outdoors along the U.S. East Coast even as a dystopian orange hue led to the cancelation of sports events, school field trips and Broadway plays.
Delivery workers, construction workers, farm laborers and railroad and airport employees on the West Coast have become all too familiar with the hazards that come with massive wildfires. Yet in the East a sun jaundiced by smoke is so novel, many workers had no idea what was happening.
Some, unprepared for the effects of smoke inhalation, left their jobs midday unable to carry on as the air quality worsened. Most, however, pushed through in the hopes that the skies would clear.
They haven’t.
A laggardly weather system has settled over the region and the smoky blanket billowing from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia continued Thursday, and may persist into the weekend.
New York City Public Schools announced Thursday that classes on Friday will switch to remote instruction. Most elementary and middle schools were scheduled to be off for a clerical day, however. In Philadelphia, the city suspended trash collection and street cleaning and repairs to protect workers from the pollution.
Some companies provided N-95 masks and allowed employees to take breaks indoors but labor rights groups pushed for more protections, replaying a years-long struggle that began in California and other Western states.
Food delivery workers on bicycles and scooters crisscrossed the streets of New York City even though a “Code Red” alert remained in place Thursday.
Bimal Jhale, 43, tried to set out on his scooter to make deliveries for Grubhub on Wednesday afternoon but was already dizzy after working as cook in a diner that morning. By evening Jhale, father of a 5-year-old boy, had recovered somewhat and tried again.
“We are taking all these risks and still what we are making is barely enough to survive so we can’t afford to miss work for even one day,” said Jhale, who spoke in Hindi through a translator from the Justice for App Workers organization.
Grubhub alerted drivers that they would not be penalized if they didn’t feel safe completing deliveries and reminded those with pre-existing conditions to stay inside, a company spokesperson said.
In recent years labor agencies in California, Oregon and Washington have adopted rules requiring employers to provide protection from wildfire smoke, including N95 respirators, breaks and sometimes moving operations indoors. California Gov. Gavin Newsom passed a bill in 2021 allowing farmworkers access to the state’s stockpile of N95 masks.
While wildfire smoke has traveled across the continent to the East Coast in the past, conditions this week were particularly severe. There is little official guidance in the East related to wildfires and there are no such specific standards at the federal level, though employers must protect workers from wildfire smoke under general laws requiring safe work sites.
There are potential long- and short-term financial and health ramifications for workers. A study last year found that every day of exposure to drifting wildfire smoke can reduce workers’ quarterly earnings by 0.1% — a toll that comes to $125 billion a year in lost income.
“One thing that seems really clear from our research is that the effects of smoke on labor earnings or labor market incomes will extend past the days in which the smoke is bad,” said Mark Borgschulte, one of the study’s authors and an assistant professor in economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “You can see people having heart attacks on days when air pollution is bad. That’s going to affect them for a long periods of time.”
Wildfire smoke contains hundreds of chemical compounds, experts note. In the short term, vulnerable people can be hospitalized and sometimes die from excessive smoke. Scientists have also linked smoke exposure with long-term health problems including decreased lung function, weakened immune systems and higher rates of flu.
Even when rules are in place, labor activists say getting companies to comply is another matter.
Tony Cardwell, president of the country’s third-largest railroad union, said he has clashed with rail companies over protections for workers in California even after new wildfire rules were place. He said the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division, which represents track maintenance workers, is sending emails this week to railroads operating in the East to seek protections, including air quality monitoring and rescheduling work.
Amtrak said it made N-95 and KN95 masks available to all employees, and in areas were where the air quality is considered hazardous, the company postponed non-critical work that requires employees to be outdoors. Norfolk Southern is conducting air monitoring and providing workers with N95 masks where needed, spokesperson Connor Spielmaker said.
Other companies scrambled to take similar steps.
Ground crews for Delta Air Lines are coming indoors in between aircraft turns, the time between when a plane pulls up to the gate and the next flight pushes back, said company spokesman Morgan Durrant.
Alex Kopp, safety director for The Association of Union Contractors, which represents 1,800 construction contractors, said the group was “concerned that air quality will have an effect on jobsite safety” and urged members to take precautions. But he acknowledged that “the current air quality certainly presents a new challenge.”
Local 3 IBEW, an AFL-CIO affiliated union representing electrical workers in New York, said it received reports of only two jobs sites closing Wednesday due to air quality issues despite public warnings to remain indoors, though some contractors are requiring masks.
Many workers were left to navigate the threat on their own.
Victor Aucapina, a construction worker doing a home renovation in Brooklyn, pulled his T-shirt over his nose between bites as he sat on a curb during a lunch break. Aucapina said he opted to keep his two young children home from school Wednesday but said he couldn’t miss work as his family’s sole breadwinner.
He was caught off guard as skies grew more yellow by lunchtime and winds carried with them the scent of burning trees.
“I didn’t think it would so bad. Now I feel the smoke, the smell,” said Aucapina, who added that he may bring a respirator if conditions don’t improve but missing work would “be a last resort.”
Wildfires of this size are so novel in the East, many workers did not immediately grasp the threat.
Warren Duckett didn’t realize anything was wrong when he set out for his construction job in Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning and heard about the wildfires on the radio. Soon, one co-worker was on his way home suffering from smoke-related sinus issues, but Duckett pushed on.
“We thought it was just a foggy morning,” Duckett said.
Duckett was hopeful that the skies would clear in the afternoon, but as in New York, that was not the case.
Conditions worsened in the country’s capital Thursday as air quality warnings deteriorated from “Code Red,” to “Code Purple.”
____
Associated Press Writer David Koenig in Dallas and Paul Wiseman in Washington, D.C. contributed to this story. Grantham-Philips reported from Washington, D.C.
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