Thomas Breen photos
Wildfire smoke still hovering over downtown Wednesday.
Update: The municipal office building at 200 Orange St. will be open from Wednesday at 6 p.m. through Thursday at 7 a.m. as a city-designated “area of refuge” for people needing a place to be indoors to escape the poor air quality, according to city spokesperson Lenny Speiller. On Thursday, all five city libraries will serve as areas of refuge during their normal business hours.
You might want to dust off that pandemic-era N‑95 mask — as New Haven’s air quality remains dangerously unhealthy for the second day in a row thanks the smoke of still-raging Canadian wildfires.
Mayor Justin Elicker sent out an email and text message alert at 12:55 p.m. Wednesday about the latest with the city’s yellow and hazy air.
Short answer: It’s not good.
“Due to smoke traveling our way from wildfires in Canada, the air quality in New Haven is still considered to be unhealthy and it is now forecasted to remain this way through most of Wednesday,” he wrote.
Just as he did yesterday (see more below), he urged people with heart or lung disease, asthma, and other respiratory ailments as well as older adults, pregnant women, children and teachers to avoid strenuous outdoor activity and, ideally, spend time indoors. Same goes for everyone else, too.
He offered one more bit of advice to protect one’s lungs: “You can also wear a N‑95 mask.”
See below for an earlier version of this article published on Tuesday evening.
Canadian Wildfire Smoke Enshrouds New Haven
Yes, the air is very smoky and yellow.
It’s not your eyes playing tricks on you. Your lungs can probably already tell.
That unpleasant and acerbic haze comes thanks to wildfires currently raging in Quebec, Canada.
Smoke from those blazes have traveled south to New Haven — and to Minnesota and Massachusetts and many places in between — resulting in uniquely unhealthy air quality.
Mayor Justin Elicker sent out an email and text message alert about the air quality quandary on Tuesday afternoon.
“People with heart or lung disease, older adults, children and teenagers should take the following steps to reduce your exposure: keep your outdoor activities short, avoid strenuous outdoor activities or, preferably, reschedule or move your physical activities indoors,” he wrote.
“Everyone else should take these steps to reduce your exposure: shorten the amount of time you are active outdoors, choose less strenuous activities (like walking instead of running) so you don’t breathe as hard or, preferably, be active outdoors when the air quality is better.”
The city’s Health Department sent out more details about the dangerously smoky conditions in a Tuesday’s morning tweet.
“The smoke is a result of wildfires burning in the Quebec and Ontario provinces of Canada,” that Tweed reads. “The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) has issued an Air Quality Action Day for fine particulates through midnight tonight. An Air Quality Action Day means that fine particulate concentrations within the region may approach or exceed unhealthy standards.
“In addition to air quality concerns there will also be intermittent reduced visibility continuing into Tuesday afternoon. The air may also have the smell of smoke throughout the day today. The smoke is modeled to exit the state tonight and should be completely gone by Wednesday morning.”
Check out AirNow.gov for the latest.
All those masks we wore during the height of the Covid outbreak can come in handy when you’re outside, to avoid breathing in the smoke particulates.
Canada is having an unprecedented amount of wildfires, many of them uncontrolled, from the West to East coasts. They are directly related to Global Warming. We have to take protecting our environment and reducing Climate Change impacts seriously or we face many more of these low air quality days and the dangers of wildfires threatening our homes and businesses and lives.