OTTAWA — Residents of Vancouver and other communities in British Columbia retreated indoors over the weekend as dense smoke from wildfires in the United States filled the skies, disrupting life in the Pacific Coast province. The province’s air quality index — established largely to track the effects of national forest fires in the country — reached 10+, its highest rating for pollution, by Monday morning. “You can actually smell smoke all the time and you can only see about two blocks now,” Chris Johnson, a lawyer in Vancouver, said on Monday morning. “It’s really bad, far beyond what usually comes from forest fires.”Forest fires, which have been limited in British Columbia this year, often force residents in the province to shelter indoors. But the current retreat has been caused by smoke drifting from the United States rather than blazes elsewhere in the country.

Source: New York Times September 14, 2020 17:14 UTC