Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday pressed for additional U.S. assistance to help battle the wildfires in Canada.
In a Canadian fire season that is just getting started but could well become the worst on record, more than 400 blazes — over a third in Quebec — burned Thursday. The smoke billowing from the fires sent plumes of fine particulate matter as far away as North Carolina and northern Europe.
"These unprecedented wildfires are a crisis for both Canada and the United States, so both nations must respond speedily and forcefully to contain the blazes," Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor. "The best way to ensure the U.S. does not suffer another wave of wildfire air pollution is to contain these fires up in Canada as soon as possible.
"We must send personnel, we must send equipment, and we must offer any assistance that our friends north of the border need."
The weather system driving the great Canadian-American smokeout — a low-pressure system over Maine and Nova Scotia — extended "Code Red" air quality alerts in some places as forecasts showed winds continuing to push smoke-filled air south.
The smoky air has created eerily silhouetted skylines as it chased players from sports fields, actors from Broadway stages, delayed thousands of flights, and sparked a resurgence in mask wearing and remote work — all while raising concerns about the health effects of prolonged exposure to such bad air.
New York City is seeing a "higher than usual" number of asthma-related visits to the emergency room, city Health Department spokesperson Pedro Frisneda said Thursday, estimating they were in the "low hundreds."
"To walk through New York City yesterday was to walk on another planet — the orange fog of wildfire smoke left our city unrecognizable," Schumer said Thursday. "From Bayside to Brooklyn, from Buffalo to Binghamton, my home state looked like the scene of a scary movie."
He also emphasized the role of climate change in wildfires, saying that both parties have "an obligation to do more" on the issue.
"We cannot fully account for these fires without recognizing that climate change is making disasters like this far more common and far more destructive," he said. "What we considered freak incidents today could become the norm tomorrow — and the more we ignore our obligation to lower carbon emissions, the greater the risks of these disasters."
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