Western senators: America ‘waking up’ to wildfire problem as smoke blankets East Coast

Several senators from western states said at a hearing on the federal wildfire response Thursday that the heavy smoke blanketing much of the East Coast this week is bringing attention to what is a common problem in the West.

“I think America is waking up, at least on the East Coast, to this problem,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing. “We certainly have known all about it on the West Coast for some time now.”

The East Coast, including Washington, D.C., remained engulfed in a smoky haze Thursday, as hundreds of fires continued burning in Canada. The smoke, which has produced air quality alerts for much of the Atlantic seaboard, is expected to stick around for several more days. 

“I’m sure many of us have seen pictures of the thick smoke over New York City over the last couple of days, which yesterday had the very worst air quality among all the world’s major cities,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said at the hearing. 

“Most Easterners aren’t used dealing with this level of smoke, and by Easterners, I mean basically anybody to the east of Colorado,” he joked. “But this is an unfortunate recurring reality for us in the West.”

Lee showed a picture of downtown Salt Lake City covered in a layer of smoke to the panel.

“That’s just an August day, when wildfires burn in places like California, and then the smoke blows over to us,” he said. 

“Western fires usually don’t cause quite the national stir that we’ve seen in the last few days, even though this is something we deal with with some regularity,” Lee continued. “But they ought to be of concern to all of us because they do happen, and for us, they happen quite frequently.”

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) similarly suggested that the timing of the hearing was appropriate, given the impacts of the Canadian wildfires.

“For those of you who live on the East Coast, welcome to our air in the West,” Risch said. “This is common. I don’t remember a summer in Boise when we haven’t had smoke. Sometimes, it’s much worse than others. We’ve had some summers that were really catastrophic in this regard.”

“But this is what with live with, and this is just the way it is,” he added. “So for me, from that standpoint, this is an important hearing; it’s an important issue.”