BERKS COUNTY, Pa. – The poor air quality affected a number of outdoor activities Friday.<\/p>\n
Antietam Pool made the decision to close early Thursday, allowing employees to leave if they chose to.<\/p>\n
The pool additionally didn’t open at all on Friday because of the continuing unhealthy air conditions.<\/p>\n
However, the Antietam Pool wasn’t alone. The West Reading Pool also looked like a ghost town. Parks and Rec. Director Mike Esterly says it’s unnatural and eerie for this time of year.<\/p>\n
“Trust me, when we have to cancel due to something that’s completely out of our realm, which is almost ‘Silent Hill’ type ambiance that we’re having with the smoke and the air quality, it’s definitely not fun,” says Esterly.<\/p>\n
He says the Borough had to pull the plug on playground group, pool operations, and a moonlight swim for the night.<\/p>\n
“[Thursday] Yesterday we closed at 6 p.m., just because I had lifeguards and managers that were getting nauseous and headaches from the air,” says Esterly. “As the day went on, it just progressively got worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nearby basketball and pickleball courts remained open, and Dante Velez came out after work and his morning run to hit the pickleball court with friends.<\/p>\n
“It’s definitely more impact on my lungs when I’m breathing, I can feel it, like I’m more tired,” says Velez. “Usually, I could play for another 2-3 hours, but today I was just like I’m done, right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berks Nature regularly hosts an eco-camp in Reading and Hamburg, but had to make some changes because of the unhealthy air quality.<\/p>\n
“We had to cancel our eco-camp at both locations just for today [Friday] for the safety of the children,” says Tami Shimp, president of Berks Nature.<\/p>\n
She says this is the first time they’ve had to make a call like that.<\/p>\n
“It’s similar to having to close in the wintertime for extreme weather conditions, except now we’re dealing with that in July,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERKS COUNTY, Pa. – The poor air quality affected a number of outdoor activities Friday. Antietam Pool made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[30257,349,106935,15559,12804,17787,106933,2303,128,130,129,106934,84857],"class_list":["post-250091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-air-quality","tag-berks-county","tag-eco-camp","tag-outdoor-activities","tag-pickleball","tag-playground","tag-pool-closure","tag-public-health","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-unhealthy-air","tag-weather-impact"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}