The sun shone feebly through the thick haze. The smell of burning wood hung thick in the air. Many New Yorkers donned masks as the air quality plummeted amid health warnings.<\/p>\n
The National Weather Service issued an air-quality alert because pollution levels were elevated as smoke from raging Canadian wildfires drifted south across a huge swathe of the US, reaching all the way to New York City and even beyond out into the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Zohran Mamdani, New York City\u2019s mayor, urged residents to stay inside. \u201cEvery New Yorker should take precautions. Limit your time outdoors, especially strenuous activity,\u201d Mamdani said.<\/p>\n
Mamdani pointed out that the city had made free KN95 masks available at hundreds of locations citywide, including libraries, police stations and its famous firehouses.<\/p>\n
National Guard soldiers hand out face masks to commuters at Grand Central Terminal as haze from Canadian wildfires blankets Manhattan in New York City. Photograph: Spencer Platt\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
On Thursday evening, the city\u2019s office of emergency management encouraged New Yorkers to avoid being outside for more than an hour. \u201cListen to your body,\u201d the department posted on its X<\/a> social media account. \u201cIf you have watery eyes, a scratchy throat, or difficulty breathing, reduce physical activity and go indoors.\u201d<\/p>\n John, a 31-year-old lifelong Queens resident with asthma, wore a mask outside so he could work security for a theater company at Times Square. His employer was encouraging staff to not overexert themselves and to take breaks in the theater for some fresh air, \u201cbut at the end of the day, we still got to be outside\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can taste the burnt paper in the air,\u201d said John, who only wanted his first name used.<\/p>\n Beside John, a group of women were selling Broadway tickets.<\/p>\n \u201cThese guys handing out Playbills and stuff on the sidewalk \u2013 they are out here all day with no protections,\u201d he said. \u201cThe march of capitalism keeps moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n A policewoman directs traffic as air quality in New York City reached one of its worst levels in three years. Photograph: Deccio Serrano\/NurPhoto\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n The smoky air was compounded by soaring temperatures. The heat in the city reached above 90F (32.2C) and in other parts of the US, a \u201cheat dome\u201d helped trap the stifling smoky air. In Detroit, closer to the burning Canadian forests<\/a>, the Motor City registered the worst air quality in the world.<\/p>\n Rachel Smalter Hall, an editor at a New York book publisher, received a message from her therapist Thursday morning to discuss whether they should keep their in-person appointment despite the hazardous air. Smalter Hall has asthma and said that if she doesn\u2019t take care of it, she can \u201cget bronchitis really easily\u201d.<\/p>\n They decided to meet remotely.<\/p>\n \u201cI had noticed when I was outside that my eyes were stinging,\u201d said Smalter Hall, a mother of two who lives in downtown Manhattan.<\/p>\n Wearing a face mask, Smalter Hall and her young daughter ventured to the Sephora store at the World Trade Center to try on makeup. She was worried about her kids.<\/p>\n \u201cThe color of the sky changing\u201d due to pollution \u201cis becoming a more and more common thing, and it just makes me really concerned for the future of air quality, for the future of their health, for the future of the health of our planet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Wildfire smoke against the Manhattan skyline. Photograph: Christopher Neundorf\/EPA<\/p>\n In Brooklyn, Jackie Bell was on maternity leave with a two-month-old girl and had planned to send her three-year-old boy to a camp at Prospect Park, but her husband needed their car.<\/p>\n So attending camp would have meant Bell, 35, had to make 30-minute walks through the smoggy air in each direction from her home with her kids in tow. She opted to keep her children home. Bell\u2019s mother drove from New Jersey to help \u201cso I didn\u2019t have a stir-crazy toddler at home\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just very grateful. I feel very privileged knowing that some people, despite the situation, might have to go outside,\u201d said Bell, who works in healthcare.<\/p>\n Aaron Freedman, a graduate student studying American history, still owned an N95 mask from the Covid-19 pandemic and wore it while walking to meet his mom for lunch in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n He had seen people with masks the night before, and it \u201csmelled so intensely of wildfire\u201d that he decided he should wear one too.<\/p>\n The smoke reminded Freedman, a lifelong New Yorker, of California, which often experiences wildfires<\/a>. The only time he recalled a similar situation locally was in June 2023<\/a>, when another Canadian wildfire caused New York\u2019s air to become toxic and its sky to become orange.<\/p>\n \u201cGrowing up, this never happened,\u201d said Freedman, 34. \u201cSo yeah, climate change, it sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sun shone feebly through the thick haze. 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