[URBAN NOTE] The National Post on smoke-drenched Vancouver

[rfmcdonald]

Over on Google Plus, I've been reading reports and seeing photos from friends in Vancouver reporting on the terrible smoke levels in that city. The National Post article by Joe O'Connor goes into still more atmospheric detail. Stay safe guys, please?

Things like forest fires, and the smoke they generate. For Vancouverites, forest fires are something that happen someplace else — in the interior of the province, or its north. But present wind patterns have been pushing smoke from three large fires on the Sunshine Coast and Sea-to-Sky area into the metropolitan region, creating a situation where the air quality is abysmal — the elderly, young, and people with respiratory problems are being urged to stay indoors — and the overriding vibe around town is downright apocalyptic.

Emily Murgatroyd is an executive recruiter. She woke up Sunday morning in Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It was hot, and sunny, but within 15 minutes of rolling back toward the ferry terminal in Nanaimo and Vancouver beyond, the atmosphere had shifted. The haze appeared. The sun bled orange. At the ferry docks it started raining ash, fine white particles that blanketed cars, seeping through windows.

Murgatroyd smelled her three-year old’s hair, as moms do. It smelled of smoke. Now back in Vancouver she describes the atmosphere as an “uneasy calm,” an otherworldly stillness — like that fleeting moment before the clouds split open and a thunderstorm strikes. But the moment in Vancouver is not fleeting. It just goes on, and on. The skies aren’t splitting open. They are drowning in smoke. People are waiting, but for what?

“It is spooky,” Murgatroyd says. “Because no one is used to this, and no one can remember something like this happening before. We have a fire season in B.C., obviously, but it happens in other places, not at your doorstep.

“It is like the zombie apocalypse. The sun looks like another planet. It makes you think about the end of time.”