NEW YORK, 17 July. - (ANA) - More than 100 wildfires are burning in Canada, where a train crew in northern Ontario filmed themselves surrounded by flames before being safely evacuated. Winds are carrying the smoke southeast.

 

Thousands of visitors were told to evacuate a remote Minnesota wilderness area accessible only by boat as wildfires send dangerously heavy smoke over the U.S. Midwest and Northeast this week.

 

Heavy, pungent smoke from Canadian wildfires darkened skies in the U.S. on Thursday from the Great Lakes to parts of the East Coast, reducing visibility and prompting warnings that breathing the air outside could be dangerous.

 

Officials in many cities urged residents to stay inside or wear masks outside as air quality reached unhealthy to hazardous levels, meaning it’s unhealthy for anyone, regardless of health conditions.

 

“It’s scary,” Omar Mitchell, 50, said as he looked he looked to the sky. He wore a mask while walking to his restaurant in Detroit. “You don’t know necessarily what the side effects may be. That’s days or months later.”

 

Microscopic particles can lodge deep in the lungs and enter the bloodstream, leading to heart and lung problems and contributing to other long-term health issues.

 

Detroit’s air quality was among the worst in the world for major cities, as a lingering high pressure system trapped smoke from dozens of fires in Canada and northern Minnesota, said Steven Freitag, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Pontiac, Michigan.

 

“Sure enough, it arrived in force here and it’s really pretty extreme levels,” said Freitag, who noted that visibility in some areas was reduced to a half mile.

 

The best advice is to stay indoors to avoid both the smoke and the extreme heat, said Tyler Hasenstein, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen, Minnesota.  - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/17 July 2026 - - -