Team of Seven Forest Rangers Head to Quebec; Ranger Crew Boss Deployed to Nova Scotia Last Week
Smoke From Raging Wildfires Continues to Trigger Air Quality Health Advisories
New Air Quality Safety Protocols Are Effective Immediately for All Horse Racing in New York
Governor Hochul: "This is an extraordinary event. It's unprecedented - in terms of the source of the air contaminants that we're experiencing right now - that we are now talking about the fact that there still remains poor air quality across the State of New York. [...] We are still seeing [air quality in] every place [in New York State] is unhealthy except for the Adirondacks."
Hochul: "I don't think there's a single person who hasn't felt something, something different. You know, more frequent coughing and just the tightness in the throat and watering of the eyes. And those are for people who are healthy. For those who have health conditions underlying already, it's a real challenge for them."
The National Weather Service is here. We have our Mesonet, so we have our meteorologists able to monitor in real time what is happening with the weather. And the weather has certainly taken a front row position in terms of our attention these days.
I just want to take a moment to, first of all, acknowledge my extraordinary team with me. We have our Commissioner of Emergency Services, Jackie Bray. We have our Commissioner of Health, Dr. McDonald. We have Commissioner Seggos, our Commissioner of DEC, and they are on this nonstop because this continues to be a public health crisis.
And we want to make sure that we are deploying all of our resources and help to anybody where we can, and the most important thing is information. The most important thing we can do is give people real time information and let them know what they can be doing to protect the health of themselves and their families. So, we've been acknowledging the fact that even today, after six days of notifications coming out from DEC, that people, you know, are aware that this is happening, that you know, this is an extraordinary event. It's unprecedented — in terms of the source of the air contaminants that we're experiencing right now — that we are now talking about the fact that there still remains poor air quality across the State of New York.
And I just want to give an update from our update yesterday. We are still seeing every place is unhealthy except for the Adirondacks. Now, that might be a nice promotion for the Adirondacks. That is the only place with clean air in the state right now. We're seeing unhealthy air quality levels on Long Island, New York, Eastern Lake, Ontario, Central New York, Western New York.
And then we also have categories of healthy for sensitive individuals. There's two different categories: unhealthy for everybody, unhealthy for people with sensitivities. That would be children, senior citizens, people with respiratory challenges. That'd be the upper and lower Hudson Valleys.
We saw yesterday some very disturbing numbers. In New York City, they've come down from the 400 level, but we should never get complacent and think that the 200 Air Quality Index is satisfactory. But right now, we're experiencing 209 in Brooklyn, 207 in Queens and 191 in the Bronx. And again, normal is 50. Actually, quite often in the State of New York, we have pristine air. It's normally about 35. You know, frequently it's 35, normal is 50. So, we look to see weather improving over a few days. We're having the rain right now.
Apparently, the particles are attached to the rain, and they come down, but it does have a chance to cleanse them. We can have more explanation on that from Jackie Bray, but we still have spikes, individual spikes of over 400 in some regions. And the message is, "This is not over." You know, we might get a little respite, but I don't want people to let down their guard and to become complacent about this because we have to be prepared for the winds to shift.
This is the unknown. We're tracking the large plume that is originating from primarily Nova Scotia, Eastern - you know, and also Quebec. But also, you know, knowing that this is going to continue to have a negative impact on our health. I don't think there's a single person who hasn't felt something, something different. You know, more frequent coughing and just the tightness in the throat and watering of the eyes. And those are for people who are healthy. For those who have health conditions underlying already, it's a real challenge for them.
And so we want to make sure that we're getting in touch with people. There are people in vulnerable communities, people who may not be checking their phone every couple of minutes for updates. They may not be seeing the news, and these are the people we're trying to reach out to.
We want to make sure that people stay indoors. Yesterday, we asked schools and child care centers to cancel or postpone outdoor school activities. Again, let's talk about the school environment. It is very safe in our school buildings, particularly since during the pandemic, we used federal dollars and were aggressively getting new filters in our schools, in our child care centers. So they are much safer than children playing outside. We've been asked often, "Should we be canceling schools?" If that means the kids are going to be outside, absolutely not. Just after school activities that are outdoor, we're talking about.
We're also having employers encourage them to make sure their own employees are taking precautions. Our own state workforce. We are tracking the air quality regularly, adjusting work assignments and asking our commissioners to be very attuned to what's going on in the particular region they are.
I will also say, this was brought up yesterday, this is our old friend — one you never want to see again, perhaps. But this mask can make a difference, not just outdoor, although I did see someone outside running on my way here wearing one of these masks. At least he was wearing a mask. But even indoors, if you have a situation where you don't have air conditioning, you have a situation where you're not feeling good inside, continue to put this on. This will make a big difference for people.
We are distributing these, we did these during the morning rush this morning in New York City. We have them at state parks, MTA stations, Javits Center, bus terminals. So we're trying to be as, you know, open-minded to different opportunities to get these out to people, encouraging local governments. We did a Zoom call last night with all the county executives and the mayors across the state letting them know that we have resources, we have storage depots where we have these available to them as well.
So I wanted to also announce that we are announcing that we are sending Forest Rangers to Canada, larger scale operations. I can have Commissioner Seggos talk about that, but this is after I spoke to the Consul General yesterday to just touch base in Canada, see how they're doing, and he was meeting with the Prime Minister. We offered more assistance — we had offered previously — but they're now taking us up on it. So, we're sending our first firefighters who are joining individuals from New Hampshire and Maine as well. They'll be departing from the Saratoga Fire Department on Friday and traveling to Quebec. They've asked for seven people over the next two weeks. We can certainly change those numbers at their request. I also noted that President Biden is also sending firefighters. This is how we can deal with this, helping Canada get to these really remote areas.
This is what the Consul General told me. He says, "These are such remote areas, they're almost impossible to access, but containment's important to us. We want to get these under control." So, I'm really proud that we're going to have New York citizens up there trying to battle these fires to help Canada, but also the collateral damage, which is that the State of New York has been really hard hit by inferior air quality, unsatisfactory air quality.
I know a lot of people are looking forward to the Belmont Stakes this weekend, so let me give a report on that. We have instituted enhanced measures to protect the horses and the riders and the spectators. Yesterday we decided, at my direction, the Gaming Commission directed all tracks to stop workouts and trainings yesterday. That will continue through today.
And this morning, the measures we are going to implement: if the air quality exceeds 200 at the facility, at any facility, there will be no racing. That's going to be canceled, if the air quality is above 200. If the air quality is 150 to 200, only horses that pass an additional pre-race vet examination will be permitted to race and we will be closely monitoring this because this is a national phenomenon. People come from all over the country. It's huge for the local economy. And so, we hopefully can get this going, but there's no assurance of what the weather's going to be, so it's going to be a last-minute decision, I'm sure.
We are still having significant delays at our airports, LaGuardia in particular. Downstate airports are definitely affected, but the National Weather Service predicts that conditions should start to improve and we're monitoring all the conditions that airports regularly. Here's my message: "This is the new reality we're dealing with."
I know a lot of people are stressed out after what happened during the pandemic. I want people to know this is a very different circumstance. We believe it will be short term, not long term. Decisions will have to be made to keep people indoors. We're not making those decisions. This is personal, but we are taking climate change so seriously here in the State of New York, always have been.
And I've said before, we're the first generation to really feel the effects of climate change and the last one to be able to do anything meaningful about it. So that is why we're going to continue our fight against climate change. And you think about even the Clean Air Act, which we have, the reason we have a Clean Air Act enacted back in 1970, was the tremendous loss of life when we had the smog event in New York City back in 1966 and almost 170 people lost their lives because of the air quality at the time.
So we're living in an era of extreme weather, statement of fact, and we're going to continue doing what we can to help do our part. We're doing our best in New York. We also need other states and the international community to join this fight as well, because I don't know what more evidence they need that we are in a crisis with our climate right now. Let's talk about what New Yorkers can do.
I think about how to prepare. We do a lot of notices when it comes to major snow events, what people need to be doing to take precautions. But I think it's as simple as this. You don't need a snow shovel. You need to keep the masks in your house, and you need to keep your phone handy and there is information on your phone in real time.
We can get you the numbers, you can look up easily just on your weather app. You can go to our sites, but you can also just go to the weather map. Look for that number. That number appears on your app. It'll tell you what is going on. Right now we're at about 191, I believe, in Albany, at least it was a little bit earlier today.
So, keep an eye on that and that should gauge your family activities. You should make decisions based on those numbers and really restrict yourself until you see those numbers starting to get into a safer zone. And it's all very clear for people. But again, not everybody has a phone. They're not watching all day. There are residents out there who need our help.
And similar to a snowstorm. Check on your neighbors. Check on senior citizens who may not be on a cell phone, may not be watching the news, and these are some of the most vulnerable people we have in our state. So, this is another opportunity to be a good neighbor, to check in on people.
And also in your own home and in your car, you can turn on the air conditioning, but be aware. That you need to have the recirculate button on in your car and in your home, especially if you're using in your home, one of the window air conditioners, because otherwise you're drawing in outdoor air right into your home and that is dangerous.
Turn on the recirculating the air so it stays internally and make sure that your filters are clean. A lot of people don't replace them very much. They lose their effectiveness if you don't replace the filters and clean them regularly. So that's what's important. Get out to everybody. For the meantime, really the best thing to do is just stay indoors.
That way, you won't have unintended health effects, you won't have the discomfort of having the smoke fill your lungs. And we're asked often about it. Are we seeing an increase in people going to emergency rooms? Are we seeing the health effects? It is still early. This has only been in full force in a very detrimental, dangerous way for the last few days.
And it does take some time, but we have seen, Dr. McDonald is monitoring, we're not seeing a spike in people going to emergency rooms, but there are a couple hospitals particularly in New York City, that are reporting more people stopping in. So I would like to ask Commissioner Basil Seggos to talk a little bit more about the Mesonet, how we're doing our real-time monitoring of information, and then we'll be happy to give a tour of that afterwards so everybody knows exactly how we're getting our information and making sure it gets out to the public as soon as possible.
