Smoke from California and Oregon wildfires has cloaked Canada's third-largest city of Vancouver -- known for its majestic mountain views and fresh ocean breezes -- in the dirtiest air in the world this week.

Days have been spent smarting under a thick haze that has irritated eyes and throats, and sent asthmatics gasping for breath. It has also complicated Covid-19 testing.

On Friday, despite forecasted smoke-clearing rain storms, the city -- 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) north of the biggest California fires -- topped for the second time this week the World Air Quality Index for worst air, after briefly ceding first place to Portland in fire-stricken Oregon.

"I'm out of breath all the time, my chest feels like it's exploding, I feel like I'm going to suffocate," Fatima Jaffer, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia, told AFP.

"I'm afraid of the long-term damage this smoke might do to my lungs and my asthma."

Authorities for the metropolitan region of 2.5 million residents issued daily air quality warnings since September 8, with things so bad that Vancouver opened five filtered "clean air shelters."

It's equivalent to smoking eight cigarettes a day, researchers noted. Health officials urged all citizens to close windows and avoid strenuous exercise or outdoor activities -- especially those with respiratory illness.

Jaffer, 58, said her worsening asthma added to a sense of panic and dread, as she had just recovered from Covid-19, which robbed her of her sense of smell. Now she worries the smog could increase her odds of reinfection or cause new health complications.

"I'd just gotten to the place of getting over the fear of Covid-19 and felt like I could breathe again," she said, "and now I literally can't."

It's been an "entire horrible week for air quality," said Armel Castellan, a federal warning preparedness meteorologist. "The fine particulate has brought our Air Quality Health Index up off the charts."

"There's no doubt this is very massive and very concerning," he said.

- Covid-19 and wildfire smoke -

The same people are at most risk of smoke inhalation and the coronavirus, according to provincial health officer Bonnie Henry. The past month has seen British Columbia's active Covid-19 cases surge 130 percent, hitting highs more than double those at the pandemic's April peak.

"For many of us, there's confusion about what symptoms are caused by smoky skies, and what symptoms are caused by Covid-19," Henry told a news conference, "particularly for people who have underlying lung disease, asthma, heart disease and diabetes."

Another vulnerable group are Vancouver's more than 2,000 homeless residents, many of whom have chronic illness, a recent survey found.

"If you're outside and homeless, and surrounded by this smoke and the pandemic, you can't get away from any of these things," said Jeremy Hunka, with Union Gospel Mission. "It's hitting a group of people that generally have been just left far more vulnerable."

For North Vancouver professional dog-walker Barry Appal, 64, he and his wife ten years his senior have had to wear masks outdoors and avoid usual strenuous trails.

"After a half-hour you could feel it in your lungs and get a headache," he said. "We're active and healthy, but with Covid-19 around, picking up any respiratory thing could become a bigger problem than normal."

He's most worried for his 30-something nephew with cystic fibrosis.

"He's very susceptible to anything to do with his lungs," Appal said. "He's already freaked out about Covid -- that could wipe him right out at the drop of a hat."

Meteorologist Castellan said conditions should improve next week thanks to brewing Pacific storms clearing the air.

But with the "fingerprints of climate change" clearly visible in the year-after-year worsening wildfire seasons, "We're not done with this yet," he warned.

Huge wildfires ravage forests worldwide
Paris (AFP) Sept 18, 2020 - The US West Coast is the latest area around the world over the past year to be devastated by wildfires, which have been fanned by global warming and often started for economic reasons.

Here is a snapshot:

- Brazil -

Between January and August, forest fires ravaged 121,318 square kilometres (46,841 square miles) in Brazil, of which 34,373 in the Amazon region and 18,646 in the Pantanal wetlands.

In the vast Latin American country, fires are commonplace, usually breaking out with the start of the dry season in June-July, and lasting until October.

They are often caused by drought, and the conversion of land for agricultural use.

In 2019 the spiralling fires in the Amazon led to an outpouring of emotion around the world and severe criticisms of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who has called reports on the Amazon fires "a lie".

- Argentina -

Ravaged by drought, the Parana Delta in Argentina, one of the largest and most biodiverse in the world, has been burning like never before since the beginning of the year.

The environment ministry says 95 percent of the forest fires are down to humans: cigarette butts, camp fires, land burnt by farmers to clear dry pastureland and regenerate it for their livestock.

A lack of rain, high temperatures and strong winds have contributed to their spread.

Fires have affected 11 Argentinian provinces out of 23, destroying some 120,000 hectares (296,526 acres).

- Australia -

Between late 2019 and early 2020, forest fires ravaged a drought-stricken area of Australia bigger than Portugal, killing more than 30 people and destroying thousands of houses. These fires also displaced or killed nearly three billion animals.

The biggest and longest-lasting bush fires in Australia's modern history, scientists have put them down to climate change.

The fires have upped pressure on Australia's conservative government to act against climate change and to reduce the country's dependence on greenhouse gas spewing coal.

Australia went through its hottest and driest year on record in 2019, with a record average temperature of 41.9 degrees Celsius (107.4 degrees Fahrenheit) recorded in mid- December.

- Russia -

This summer Russia's airborne firefighters have fought at least 197 fires over the whole of Russian territory, representing in total more than 43,000 hectares, mainly in the region of Yakuty, in eastern Siberia.

They left another 380,000 hectares which were being ravaged by fire alone, under a government policy which consists in not fighting fires which are in Siberia's remote uninhabited forests.

After an outcry, after the fumes reached some of Siberia's most populous cities, President Vladimir Putin sent in the army to put out the fires as more than 3.2 million hectares burned.

According to the European Copernicus service on climate change, this summer's gigantic fires in Siberia were fanned by record temperatures, which were on average five degrees Celsius higher than usual for the season. Less humid soil also contributed.

They caused record emissions of greenhouse gas CO2.

According to Copernicus, some of them could have been the result of "zombie fires" which would have subsisted underground since 2019.

- Indonesia -

In Indonesia, vast fires in 2019 ravaged the forests on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, destroying 1.6 million hectares, generating toxic fumes and massive emanations of greenhouse gases.

Indonesia deployed tens of thousands of people and water sprinkling planes to deal with the first fires of 2020.

The fires are often lit on purpose to clear land for agriculture, like palm oil plantations, but then get out of control.

Related Links
Forest and Wild Fires - News, Science and Technology

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As Brazil's wetlands burn, rain is 'only hope'
Porto Jofre, Brasil (AFP) Sept 16, 2020
Lieutenant Silva's face is grim as he watches his firefighters try - and fail - to control one of the thousands of wildfires ravaging Brazil's Pantanal, the world's biggest tropical wetlands. "It needs to rain. We've got low moisture, intense heat. With that combination, rain is our only hope," says Silva, even as new flames break out at the spot his team of six firefighters is trying to douse on the grounds of an ecotourism hotel in the northern Pantanal. Even when the fire looks to be out, e ... read more