Opinions

Fairbanks visitors don face masks to deal with wildfire smoke

The tourist guides show blue skies and sunshine, but some visitors to Fairbanks opted for white face masks Tuesday to deal with the thick smoke that blanketed much of Interior Alaska.

The Evans family from Maine and other points east—Bruce, Kathy and Susan—said they traveled from Denali National Park to Fairbanks in the morning and the smoke took them by surprise. They wore face masks because it seemed like the right thing to do. "Everybody coming back off the bus recommended it," said Bruce. A kayak excursion had to be canceled.

Did the face masks make a difference? "Absolutely," Kathy and Susan said.

Fairbanks Memorial Hospital opened a "clean air" room and invited asthma patients in for a breath of fresh air, and it put all of its automated doors in manual mode to try to keep the smoke out. Air filters were sold out or in short supply at every store, and many people stayed indoors. The vagaries of the winds created closed-in conditions that made it seem as if someone had slapped a lid on a pot.

"We knew there were fires," said Shanon Younglove of St. Louis, who took an afternoon walk on Second Avenue. "We didn't know it meant this," motioning to the fog-like cloud that cut visibility downtown to less than a mile.

Along with the rest of the Younglove contingent, she wore a face mask provided by the front desk of the Princess hotel for their trip downtown. In the afternoon gloom, which was just enough to prompt drivers to turn on their headlights, the Youngloves offered no complaints.

"It's Mother Nature," said Linda Younglove. "It's Alaska," said Krystina. "If this is the worst that happens, we're OK."

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The winds early Tuesday channeled heavy smoke from several forest fires toward Fairbanks, where the pollution at 1 p.m. downtown gave the entire town the smell of a smoke-filled bar. The Air Quality Index, based on a scale from zero to 500, showed Fairbanks near the upper extreme. The air pollution was about 50 times worse than the average summer day when the air is clear.

By 2 p.m., the Air Quality Index had improved to 405, which was about 200 points worse than Beijing at that hour. There was much cleaner air in Delhi, where the U.S. Embassy recorded a reading of 120.

The Tuesday smoke readings in Fairbanks did not exceed those of 2004, when particulate levels climbed to about 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter and ash fell from the skies, the fallout from a large fire northwest of the city. The maximum Tuesday was about half of that level.

The air quality improved to "very unhealthy" by 6 p.m. but returned to "hazardous" an hour later as particulate pollution shot back up.

The National Weather Service said visibility Tuesday dropped to a quarter-mile in Nenana, and it issued a dense-smoke advisory in effect until Wednesday morning. Much of the smoke came from the Rex Complex fire, the agency said, but with multiple fires burning west of Fairbanks, the forecasters couldn't offer immediate hope for improved visibility or air quality.

Dermot Cole

Former ADN columnist Dermot Cole is a longtime reporter, editor and author.

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