California’s deadly wildfires have darkened the skies for a hundred miles, causing respiratory problems and making it hard to see the sun not only in the state’s wine country but as far as San Francisco and Sacramento.
Wind-driven smoke and soot forced coastal San Franciscans to breathe air as dirty as parts of Beijing on Thursday and Friday. School districts far away from the fire zone urged parents to keep children with respiratory illnesses at home and at least one university cancelled classes.
“I have asthma and allergies, and my chest really hurts,” said Beatriz Lerma, a white face mask over her mouth and nose in a clinic at an evacuation centre in Petaluma, west of the fires.
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Since the deadly fires began amid hurricane-force winds on Sunday night, the air has turned unhealthy or hazardous not only in hard-hit Sonoma and Napa counties, where the worst fires are burning, but locations 50 miles away or more, said Melanie Turner, a spokeswoman for the California Air Resources Board.
Moving with the wind, the bad air brings eerie daytime gray to far-flung communities and turns the sun orange.
“The smoke is moving around and it’s changing all the time,” Turner said.
Concern over air quality prompted so much traffic on a government website that tracks it, AirNow.gov, that it crashed intermittently Thursday and Friday.