The famous Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline are shrouded in an ominous yellow-orange haze: forest fires in Quebec are darkening New York, 800 km to the south, and making the air unbreathable for its 8.5 million residents, AFP reports.

“You can’t even see the Statue of Liberty,” protests Jack Wright of Brooklyn’s East River. This 76-year-old former lawyer claims he “gave up smoking 50 years ago” but says he “coughs” just like he did when he was a smoker.

Medical masks reappear on the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, and Hugh Hill walks his dog in Central Park, the vast green lung of the economic and cultural capital of the United States.

The bleary-eyed 43-year-old lawyer says he does his best not to breathe in too much air with the pungent, distinctive smell of burnt wood.

“I don’t know if it’s a psychological or a physical problem, but I know there are benefits to wearing a mask, although obviously it can’t prevent everything,” he told AFP.

New York is shrouded in yellow-orange smog (photo: David Dee Delgado / Getty images / Profimedia)

Conditions Deteriorating / Pollution Record 324 on a scale of zero to 500

Right in the center of Manhattan, the financial and business heart of the metropolis, the weather conditions worsen every hour: the yellow-orange fog thickens around the skyscrapers, and the air is almost unbreathable for officials who are in a hurry to have lunch.

As early as Tuesday, city and state officials issued warning notices to warn New Yorkers of the sudden and unprecedented impact of these wildfires in Canada, whose intensity and frequency have been linked to climate change.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader in Washington’s Senate, said he was “saddened to see that New York, which normally has good air quality, has some of the worst air quality in the world because of the wildfires in Quebec. , 800 km to the north.

The situation is even worse in the large green and upscale suburbs north of the Bronx along the Hudson River, where the sky turns yellow-orange-gray.

According to Gov. Kathy Hochul, the air quality index has risen from “harmful” to “very harmful” and all outdoor school and after-school activities have been suspended.

“This is not a day to be training for a marathon,” Mayor Eric Adams warned in his understated style.

According to IQAir.com, which monitors pollution levels around the world, New York’s air quality index reached a record high of 324 on a scale of zero to 500 on Wednesday afternoon.

The concentration of PM2.5 microparticles is more than ten times higher than the standards set by the World Health Organization.