CHAMBERSBURG – Last week’s air quality was rough.
Pennsylvania and Western Maryland made it to the purple alert, which meant that the air was very unhealthy and posed a health risk to everyone.
In Canada, there are apparently 900 wildfires blazing and less than 100 of them are contained.
President Donald Trump has threatened higher tariffs, accusing Ottawa of willful negligence.
The Prime Minister of Canada has suggested it’s all climate change.
Michele Jansen of News Talk 103.7FM pointed out, “The people that say that they are more plugged in with climate change than the United States is, and are blaming it on it, seem to be less prepared for handling those so-called results of climate change than we are, which seems a little odd. If you really know this is all coming, you would think they would have better preparations and handling of the things that would be burning due to climate change.”
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “Canada has 156 crews battling these fires. That math doesn’t add up. They clearly don’t have the resources to get this under control. And my concern is this: so we know how bad it was here Thursday and Friday. It’s largely dissipated now. It hasn’t totally gone away though. You can still see the haze, but you look at some of these meteorologists, they are concerned that this may become an intermittent situation over the next few weeks and months. In other words, as the jet stream and weather patterns change, this smoke could just keep returning off and on for a few days at a time.”
This could bring serious health issues to the US.
Barkdoll said, “There’s economic fallout from this. Look at all of the things that got canceled Thursday and Friday in the Northeast and the New England area, and if this just keeps going on, at what point might you see the U.S. state government, local private firms take some kind of an action? And I don’t know what that action would be. The recommendation is to stay inside, don’t go outdoors when that returns again.”
Jansen added, “A seven-day outlook. Now I don’t know how good the smoke predictions are. This is from AirNow.gov. They say Thursday, Friday, Saturday that we are going to get back into the red, and even one day in the purple is the prediction right now.”
Barkdoll said, “I was talking to somebody in Harrisburg late last week about this, and they were speculating, could you see just calls for voluntary work from home? The idea being they don’t want people outside in this kind of an environment. If it returns again, like we had last week, there really are health problems associated with this, but the dilemma is there’s no real solution to it. As you’re saying, this is happening in Canada. They’re getting more resources in there to try to put these out, but the extent of it is so large. This is not going to go away quickly.”