Air quality warning issued for NYC following NJ wildfires

Wildfires across New Jersey sent smoke billowing across the Hudson River and an eerie yellow-brown haze lingering over New York City, prompting an air quality health advisory through Sunday night for the metropolitan area as well as the Hudson Valley that warns of unhealthy pollutant levels through Sunday night.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation and state Department of Health issued the warning about excess fine particulate matter — tiny particles of pollution— that can trigger short-term health effects including irritation to the eyes, nose, and throat, coughing, sneezing, runny nose, and shortness of breath, and that can worsen medical conditions like asthma and heart disease.

Those with heart or breathing problems, children and the elderly may be particularly sensitive, according to the DEC.

The advisory, which began at 12 a.m. Sunday, stays in effect until 11:59 p.m.

At least six fires, all of them fueled by record bone-dry conditions and windy weather, engulfed the Garden State on Saturday, from the Pinelands in central and western parts of New Jersey to New York City suburbs.

New Jersey hasn’t had a measurable amount of rain in over a month, setting a new record, according to the National Weather service. The extreme dryness has made battling the fires even more difficult.

On Saturday, a teenager working with the New York State Department of Parks and Recreation died while fighting a wildfire near the New Jersey border in Orange County.

Dariel Vasquez, 18, was killed when a tree fell on him while he was battling a blaze near Greenwood Lake, according to Eastern Dutchess County Fire and Rescue. Vasquez was employed as a parks and recreation aide with the New York state’s Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Department.

The deadly blaze, dubbed the Jennings Creek Fire, erupted Saturday in West Milford. It covered 2,500 acres and was 0% contained as of Sunday morning, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.

It continued burning near Greenwood Lake, which straddles the border between New York’s Orange County and New Jersey’s Passaic County. No evacuations were ordered.

Several wildfires were burning throughout the New York-New Jersey area on Sunday, the products of extremely dry conditions in the wake of little October rain fall.

Another fire in Passaic County — the Cannonball 3 Fire near Pompton Lakes — broke out on the property of the old DuPont factory, a former chemical worksite, Friday afternoon. It was 75% contained by Sunday morning, according to New Jersey’s fire service. That fire was significantly smaller, burning about 175 acres.

Earlier Friday, a separate fire broke out in Englewood Cliffs near Exit 1 on the Palisades Parkway, about a mile north of the George Washington Bridge. By Saturday night, it had ripped through 39 acres and was 75% contained, according to the Forest Fire Service.

One northbound lane of the parkway had been closed, and Henry Hudson Drive was also shut down.

The fires produced enough smoke to be clearly seen on satellite images.

“You can see the smoke coming off the fire and heading southeast, kind of going towards the bridges, and then fades off the coast of Long Island,” said National Weather Service meteorologist John O’Hara.

New Yorkers should reduce their exposure to excess fine particulate matter in the air by staying inside and avoiding strenuous activities in areas where fine particle concentrations are high, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation. It issued a similar, but much more serious, warning last year when smoke from wildfires in Canada caused unhealthy air conditions across New York City.

“Climate change is going to force us to rethink the conditions that we are going to be facing,” Mayor Eric Adams said in response to the wildfires last year. “This is a new universe that we’re in.”