JoVonne Wagner
ICT
As a record 368 wildfires continued to burn in Canada this week, smoke from the fires has impacted tribes in Washington, Idaho and Montana, with some communities canceling events and others utilizing emergency response funding to attain air purifiers.
Around 27,000 individuals are under an evacuation order from British Columbia, and fires burning in the province’s southern interior, including the Scotch Creek, Okanagan Valley and Kelowna areas, have sent smoke across the U.S.-Canadian border, according to the Associated Press.
Air quality indexes in Washington, Idaho and Montana have shown poor air quality measures. With healthy air quality numbers ranging between 0 and 100, central areas of Washington alone have seen air quality numbers in the 170s and 180s, according to Washington’s Air Monitoring Network.
The Nez Perce tribe in Lapwai Idaho has been hit by smoke from in-state fires, fires in Washington and Canadian wildfires. And a Montana tribe, the Blackfeet Nation, has been monitoring air quality to better ensure its community is well informed in order to take its own protective measures.
John Wheaton, Nez Perce emergency planning coordinator, spoke to ICT and described conditions on the reservation.
“It’s been getting more and more worse,” he said.
Even though the area in Idaho isn’t a stranger to wildfires during the hot season, they are using proactive measures to ensure the community has better air quality.
Wheaton said the tribe is one of five Idaho tribes allotted funding from Idaho’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness program. This year the tribe was awarded around $40,500 to help acquire air purifiers to disperse to vulnerable populations in the community. Classes and workshops also are provided to teach how to make at-home air purifiers with fans and air filters.
Meanwhile, smoke hung heavy near the community Tuesday, Wheaton said.
“You couldn’t even see the far mountains, and you can see all the smoke just kind of in the valley,” he said. “It was a pretty cool sight to see, but all those people that are down there are breathing that in.”
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On the Blackfeet reservation in northern Montana, smoke has been frequent and usual in the forecast. The reservation borders Alberta, Canada so any smoke coming from the province usually settles thick on the reservation.
Tony Sinclair Sr., the tribe’s air quality program manager and air quality commission control officer, said the tribe has been getting smoke throughout the summer but more recently from Canada.
Sinclair has been working in the air quality department for the past 33 years and has helped establish a resource that monitors the tribe’s air quality index and records the data. The data is translated into charts that Sinclair distributes throughout his community.
Community members with asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure along with school’s student athletes feel the impact of the unhealthy air quality and Sinclair emphasized the need for air quality monitoring.
“It’s because it’s protecting the health of our people and the reason I say that is you don’t live too long if you breathe bad air,” he said. “It causes a lot of health effects, whether you’re an infant to an elder. That’s why it’s important to stay on top of it and make sure that we have the alerts to warn people so they can take measures to protect themselves through the emergency smoke days. We’re on top of it and have been on top of it for, for a long time.”
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