‘My nose runs, my eyes and throat start to itch and within half an hour I have a throbbing headache’: TOM LEONARD describes what it was like on the day the Big Apple turned into the Big Orange

Like the menacing opening scene of a sci-fi film, the hazy orange sky has something of the Apocalypse about it. Then I’m hit by the acrid smell of burning as though a neighbour has put something unpleasant on the bonfire.

My nose runs, my eyes and throat start to itch and within half an hour I have a throbbing headache.

The streets are quiet, the local park almost empty with just a few brave dog walkers there out of necessity, but no children playing and no joggers.

Suddenly the health benefits of outdoor exercise are far outweighed by its risks as smoke from raging Canadian wildfires hundreds of miles north blows across much the Eastern half of the US.

Since Tuesday, cities including New York and Washington DC have been blanketed in a smog so thick that by the afternoon landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty barely show up as outlines.

Like the menacing opening scene of a sci-fi film, the hazy orange sky has something of the Apocalypse about it, Tom Leonard describes his experience in New York City

My nose runs, my eyes and throat start to itch and within half an hour I have a throbbing headache

The streets are quiet, the local park almost empty with just a few brave dog walkers there out of necessity, but no children playing and no joggers

Since Tuesday, cities including New York and Washington DC have been blanketed in a smog so thick that by the afternoon landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty barely show up as outlines

For the estimated 100million people now living under health alerts, it has felt like a return to the ordeal of the Covid-19 lockdown.

Some schools closed because teachers didn’t want to come to work; flights, sporting and entertainment events were cancelled, and people were urged to dig out their pandemic N95 respirator masks to wear outdoors.

On Wednesday, New York had the worst air quality of any major city in the world. Experts rolled off an alarming list of the immediate effects of inhaling wildfire smoke – shortness of breath, chest pain, elevated pulse, and inflammation of the eyes, nose and throat.

In the longer term, it has been linked to cancer and lung disease due to toxic particles in the smoke small enough to enter the bloodstream. Scientists estimated that inhaling the smoke for a day was the equivalent of smoking half a pack of cigarettes.

No wonder, then, that people have stayed at home, zoos shepherded their animals indoors and those children in school haven’t been allowed out at break and lunchtime.

On Broadway, British actress Jodie Comer was a prominent casualty, dramatically halting Wednesday’s matinee of her acclaimed one-woman legal play Prima Facie just ten minutes into the performance.

She walked off stage, complaining she was finding it difficult to breathe. Her understudy, Dani Arlington, stepped in to complete the performance, earning rapturous applause although some of the audience – this being sharp-elbowed New York – demanded a refund. Out on the streets, motorists have been putting on their headlights at midday while streetlights, sensitive to the fading light, automatically switch on in daylight hours.

Air quality on Subway platforms was even worse than at ground level with smoke particles visible in the air.

On Wednesday, New York had the worst air quality of any major city in the world

A picture comparison of smoke affecting air quality of The Reservoir in Central Park and the same park on a normal clear day

Airports have been seriously affected, with hundreds of flights grounded and delayed at major hubs in the US north-east because of poor visibility.

As to why the sky turned orange – a question puzzling many – experts explained that smoke particles allow sunlight’s longer wavelength colours, like red and orange, to pass through but block the shorter blue, green and yellow wavelengths.

Free masks were distributed in New York where the air quality was declared to be at its worst since the 1960s – worse even than on 9/11 in September 2001, when the air was filled with pulverised rubble and dust from the destroyed World Trade Center.

The city’s mayor Eric Adams called the situation ‘unprecedented’ and the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, said it was an ’emergency crisis’. But she urged residents not to despair. ‘This is a temporary situation. This is not Covid,’ she said at a news conference yesterday.’

But for many, it feels very much like the pandemic.

In Canada, meanwhile, 600 American firefighters have been sent over the border, joining reinforcements from Australia and New Zealand, to help the Canadians battle the inferno.

Much of the smoke is coming from the eastern province of Quebec where some 160 fires have broken out – but the carnage extends across the country, running to 400 separate wildfires. Some were sparked by lightning strikes but most were started accidentally by people.

Around 30,000 Canadians have had to be evacuated from their homes and an area the size of 10million football pitches – more than nine million acres – has burned. That’s more than ten times the area that has usually been scorched by wildfires by this time of year.

The Canadian government has blamed climate change – the country has had an unusually dry and warm spring after a particularly snow-free winter. However, others say the nightmare could have been avoided by better forest management. In particular, dead trees have been allowed to stand and an insufficient number of controlled fires have been carried out to clear forests of a flammable surplus.

The fires could easily escalate as it gets hotter and dryer during the summer. Meteorologists said the prevailing weather pattern meant smoke was being funnelled into the US, and could stay there until the weekend when a cold front brings rain and blows its away.

Until then, as one TV weatherman cheerily told viewers: ‘It looks like Mars out there.’

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