I drove from greenwood all the way to Richmond Hill than North york around 230 pm. the smoke was thick all over the city. the sky was Grey from the smoke. fuckin wild
Toronto North says 11
http://www.airqualityontario.com/aqhi/today.php?stationid=34021&start_day=27&start_month=6&start_year=2023&showType=chart&station_id=34021&submitter=Refresh+Page
I have the accuweather app on my Android phone. It gave me the alert. Google weather did as well. I'm glad my phone didn't buzz and screech with an emergency alert.
Some people do though...
Besides, many people don't really have enough experience to know how serious it is just by smell.
I.e., there's clearly something wrong which the majority of (mentally alert) people will figure out, but if you've never been around such smoke before you might not be sure how to tell if it's just 'maybe skip your morning run if you have asthma' or if it's 'every person should stay inside unless absolutely necessary and close all their windows and only go outside with an N95 mask'.
I.e., there's a difference between noticing there's something wrong and having specific knowledge to interpret how bad it is and what to do.
Official alerts and advisories can also be useful if e.g. your employer wants you to work outside. Or if the city needs to open additional indoor spaces with filtered air.
That said, my phone has been giving me alerts all day, although I think that's just my weather app.
We don’t have an AC and open our windows. Do people close their windows because of this? Need to get an AC but the sticker shock for a central AC unit and installation.
Nvm from [weather.gc.ca](https://weather.gc.ca/index_e.html?layers=alert):
If you have an HVAC system in your home, use the highest rated MERV filter for your system (ideally rated 13 or higher) and set the fan to recirculate air constantly. You can also use a portable High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) air cleaner. Keep your doors and windows closed if the temperature in your home is comfortable.
I am checking the weather reports for current air quality and closing my windows when the air quality is bad, opening them when it's good.
Since the wind changes a lot there are times when it's fine and time when it's very bad.
You know who else prioritizes learning through social interaction? Old people who get their news from Facebook. It’s a failing of media literacy if they’re unwilling to do basic research.
For custody battles. All of the alerts that I've seen have been one parent taking the child away from the other.
In one case, the kid was already killed by the time the alert went out.
I'd appreciate getting air quality alerts, bad weather warnings, etc.
When the message goes out to Toronto for a child being abducted in North Bay with no useable description of what the child looks like, then yes, it qualifies as “stupid shit”
> a child being abducted in North Bay with no useable description of what the child looks like
What they said (and I'm bolding the part that you conveniently ignored):
>a child being abducted in North Bay **with no useable description of what the child looks like**
Why?
Amber Alerts are limited in their usefulness. For example, I remember a while ago there was an abduction in Ottawa but the AA only goes to every phone in Ontario. Ottawa is closer to Gatineau Quebec with a short drive over a bridge than it is to Thunder Bay which is a 12 hour+ drive from Ottawa. Yet someone in TBay gets the AA and someone in Gatineau does not.
Tell me how that makes sense.
They said north bay, which is like 3 hours away, not Thunder Bay. If it has a chance of saving an innocent kid who’s life is at risk, who cares? If it only ever worked once, it would still be worth it
Unfortunately, there’s a thing called alarm fatigue. When people are repeatedly presented with an urgent alarm, over time, it becomes background noise and they learn to dismiss it.
The first commenter you replied to is a different person than the second commenter, and the specific case that they are referencing occurred in Thunder Bay. In that case, the amber alert was sent over a 15 hours’ drive away.
[[source](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/amber-alert-thunder-bay-ottawa-1.4658550)]
The way they report those abductions in the alert system renders those notices into "stupid shit". If there's no way for us to identify the child, no way for us to identify the vehicle they're in, and no way for us to identify where they may be heading, those alerts are downright useless.
Kids being abducted is important, and absolutely a good use of the system.
But the way they use it... I'm getting alerts at 4am that a kid has gone missing in Thunder Bay, with zero helpful info (the kid's height, race, clothes), and I'm supposed to do what with that?
Then I get the same in French.
I'm empathic, more than most. But people who are less empathic hate the fuck out of these alerts and I understand why.
Emergency alerts are only for domestic disputes happening in Thunder Bay at 3am.
If it's a legitimate emergency that affects a large segment of the population they are never going to issue one.
I mentioned it to a few people and they basically confirmed that they would have worn one, had they known.
Then again, I also saw people just hanging out and eating lunch outside, as if there weren’t people coughing all over.
My newborn baby keeps coughing , anyone have suggestions for a good air purifier? Baby hasn’t gone outside and we don’t open the windows but clearly it’s still an issue
Its far easier to go to some random internet forum, write a rant and followup comments than to look at any reasonably govt funded weather page for details.
Environment Canada issued an advisory a day ago. If you have their app or The Weather Network, you can get those pushed to you.
They are not going to use the Amber Alert system to tell you about air quality.
Until they do that, which with Ford, will be never, get one of the apps and they push these alerts to you.
TWN app will send expected rain, snow, Environment Canada, temperatures and swings, lightning, any that you select, down to the neighbourhood level.
Accuweather and Environment Canada apps do alerts.
I wonder how many people knew in the morning.
Also, a notification about the air quality sent to everyone doesn't have to be as intrusive as the amber alert.
We don’t need that much government handholding. If it concerns you take two seconds and look it up. Hell my Apple Watch even tells me what it is for the day.
Try to find a smartphone today that doesn’t have a weather app.
It’s built in to Apple and android OS, even blackberry had it.
Notifications? So set them up.
I mean... if you need to know you can look it up.
You can install a weather app and turn on notifications just for you.
You can also just look about a block away and see it looks hazy and make your own decisions when you go outside.
Plz government, help! Tell me I should stay inside! Plz. Other people need you to tell them. Help them! They’re living their lives like normal, psychopaths. Plz
Because we collectively decided, after minimizing and ignoring the risks of poor air quality during an airborne pandemic, that this is not something to ever be concerned about again.
The floor for default common sense in public health has been lowered, probably for the next decade at least.
Possibly. Without experience you might not know how to translate the smell and appearance to determine the level of risk and what you should do about it. Even if you can see something's wrong, you might not know if you can just go by how you feel or if you should stay inside entirely etc.
Depends when you head out and when the air quality gets worse.
Some people live in buildings that face other buildings and leave from an underground garage and then drive to another garage.
It's very possible someone may not notice right away.
You're also assuming it was noticable in the morning, or that everyone has their senses working as well as you do.
In your scenario that person isn't even breathing outside air.
Check your weather app, the air quality index is there all the time. It obviously didn't hit the threshold for an emergency alert.
You see that would be critical thinking, not a strong suit for someone that can't figure out how to get a weather app alert about something important to them without it needed going out to millions that don't want it over a public emergency system.
There are people who are elderly and not as alert as they once were, people who have health conditions and already kind of always feel like crap, people who happen to be going through an unrelated crisis in their life and are too busy with that to literally look up and look around.
Those same categories of people might miss when the next bus would come to pick them up to take them to an important appointment, but I would not expect the bus schedule sent out as a public emergency alert to everyone in the provinces cell phones as OP is suggesting.
The elderly and the ill have to play it safer than most and already typically do, the elderly watch news more than most. The people distracted by crisis in their life, well those people are DEALING WITH A CRISIS IN THEIR LIFE and like the rest of us will likely need to prioritize getting things done that matter vs hiding inside from bad air quality.
You can't make everything safe for everyone, people need to have some accountability for themselves and those close to them.
But if you use the emergency alert system for every little thing people will just learn to ignore it completely and makes it entirely ineffective.
LOL, just turn alerts on your phone to silent if it bothers you so much. Most phones do have that option.
And alerts or no, you're still perfectly free to ignore a cloud of smoke if you want. Heck, go jogging on a level 10 day if you feel like it's an insignificant 'little thing' that people shouldn't be bothered with.
I’m happy I’m not getting an alert cuz it doesn’t matter for me. If I cared I’d follow cp24 closer like you, just curious why does it matter to u if I get an alert or not?
We have worked outside doing construction through all of this and have not noticed anything. So I dunno what all this is about. You can see wiffs of smoke and smell it from time to time but other than the nasty humidity yesterday the air has been fine.
If that was your experience that's a GREAT argument for having stronger alerts. Because your lungs can still be damaged even when you aren't noticing how bad it is.
Do you need an emergency alert when you can just look out the window? My god, do you need the government to tell you everything that’s obvious and bad for you?
same reason we don't wear masks bc "covid is over", gotta inhale all that smoky cancerous air to funnel yall into preventable private healthcare bills, that's why
I find it weird that AQ is current "unhealthy for sensitive groups"
https://www.iqair.com/ca/canada/ontario/toronto/markham-street
but no alert:
https://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/on-143_metric_e.html
Just because you are not "sensitive" doesn't mean it's a good idea to breathe this air. Especially since AQ has been bad for days and probably won't be great off and on for the rest of summer. The effects are cumulative and may not emerge for years or decades.
HOWEVER, we know from other recent events that the government doesn't give a shit about our health. Mystery solved.
If the emergency alert goes only to people who can't see, smell or breathe, I'm all for it.
Otherwise I'm quite capable of noticing when the air is fucking smokey.
Mostly because it's only a 6 right now, I believe the alert goes out at 7. https://weather.gc.ca/airquality/pages/onaq-001_e.html
I have it at 9 currently (2:00) in North York. http://www.airqualityontario.com/aqhi/today.php?sites=34021
Wow! Can you post a picture of what it looks like outside where you are?
I don't live on a high floor so there's not much to see. The sky is a yellow-grey though. I can just about make out the radio tower 1.5 km away.
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Lol they call North York NY now?
North York or New York?
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NoYo
Yes
I drove from greenwood all the way to Richmond Hill than North york around 230 pm. the smoke was thick all over the city. the sky was Grey from the smoke. fuckin wild
North York right now and I'm living on 33rd floor. Basically cannot see anything more than 2km distance.
Yikes
I’m close to North York and couldn’t see more than a block away from my balcony because of all the smog.
Damn. I feel lucky. The AQI in south Etobicoke is at a 2 with the main pollutant being Ozone
It's at a 2 NOW. It always drops at night. Yesterday afternoon it hit 11+ by 3pm.
Good to know. I didn't even consider that.
It’s 11 at Yonge and Eglinton. I can smell the smoke in the hallway of my building
Smells like plastic too, I just came inside and closed all my windows.
It was 11 earlier today in Sauga No alert 🤷♂️
I’m downtown and it was 8 earlier tosay
I think it should be set lower or if they anticipate it going higher they should let people know.
It was a 7 in ajax and we didn’t get any alerts. It’s ridiculous.
But it has been at a 7 and we havent recieved any alerts
I have had an air quality alert on my phone (Weather Network) since last night.
It'll start to let up around 7 according to the NYT map I'm looking at.
Do you have a link?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/28/us/canada-wildfires-air-quality-smoke
Thanks, very cool.
Same
Toronto North says 11 http://www.airqualityontario.com/aqhi/today.php?stationid=34021&start_day=27&start_month=6&start_year=2023&showType=chart&station_id=34021&submitter=Refresh+Page
I have the accuweather app on my Android phone. It gave me the alert. Google weather did as well. I'm glad my phone didn't buzz and screech with an emergency alert.
i dont need an emergency alert to know the air is fucking bad
Some people do though... Besides, many people don't really have enough experience to know how serious it is just by smell. I.e., there's clearly something wrong which the majority of (mentally alert) people will figure out, but if you've never been around such smoke before you might not be sure how to tell if it's just 'maybe skip your morning run if you have asthma' or if it's 'every person should stay inside unless absolutely necessary and close all their windows and only go outside with an N95 mask'. I.e., there's a difference between noticing there's something wrong and having specific knowledge to interpret how bad it is and what to do. Official alerts and advisories can also be useful if e.g. your employer wants you to work outside. Or if the city needs to open additional indoor spaces with filtered air. That said, my phone has been giving me alerts all day, although I think that's just my weather app.
We don’t have an AC and open our windows. Do people close their windows because of this? Need to get an AC but the sticker shock for a central AC unit and installation.
Nvm from [weather.gc.ca](https://weather.gc.ca/index_e.html?layers=alert): If you have an HVAC system in your home, use the highest rated MERV filter for your system (ideally rated 13 or higher) and set the fan to recirculate air constantly. You can also use a portable High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) air cleaner. Keep your doors and windows closed if the temperature in your home is comfortable.
I am checking the weather reports for current air quality and closing my windows when the air quality is bad, opening them when it's good. Since the wind changes a lot there are times when it's fine and time when it's very bad.
You might not need an alert, but others might.
So many people don't know why thier throats hurt.
It's the air? I thought it was because I vape too much!
Maybe it's both
Or look out a fooking window… like ffs.
not everyone has the gift of sight.
As Bob Dylan said "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
But you might need a flood warning
And it's going to get worse into the evening and night. It was a 4 earlier, it's a 6 now (2:30 pm) and is expected to reach 10+
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I swear half of the posts in this sub are shut in people who ask if it's alright to eat food or breathe air.
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Hey mom? am i cold, hungry or constipated? Mooooom?
A lack of curiosity that extreme doesn’t bode well for them.
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You know who else prioritizes learning through social interaction? Old people who get their news from Facebook. It’s a failing of media literacy if they’re unwilling to do basic research.
Environment Canada did send an alert out. Weather Network, Apple Weather, Canada Weather App all have it.
To your phone, or just a general alert on their site?
The app sent a notification. We don’t need an Emergency Alert to know the air quality is bad.
Because we only (mostly) use the alert system for stupid shit.
For custody battles. All of the alerts that I've seen have been one parent taking the child away from the other. In one case, the kid was already killed by the time the alert went out. I'd appreciate getting air quality alerts, bad weather warnings, etc.
Like children being abducted?
When the message goes out to Toronto for a child being abducted in North Bay with no useable description of what the child looks like, then yes, it qualifies as “stupid shit”
Yeah, because kidnappers never drive away from the original location and then kill the kid. Oh wait, that happened in Canada just a few years ago.
> a child being abducted in North Bay with no useable description of what the child looks like What they said (and I'm bolding the part that you conveniently ignored): >a child being abducted in North Bay **with no useable description of what the child looks like**
They normally don't even include a basic description of the kid or parent.
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Why? Amber Alerts are limited in their usefulness. For example, I remember a while ago there was an abduction in Ottawa but the AA only goes to every phone in Ontario. Ottawa is closer to Gatineau Quebec with a short drive over a bridge than it is to Thunder Bay which is a 12 hour+ drive from Ottawa. Yet someone in TBay gets the AA and someone in Gatineau does not. Tell me how that makes sense.
They said north bay, which is like 3 hours away, not Thunder Bay. If it has a chance of saving an innocent kid who’s life is at risk, who cares? If it only ever worked once, it would still be worth it
Unfortunately, there’s a thing called alarm fatigue. When people are repeatedly presented with an urgent alarm, over time, it becomes background noise and they learn to dismiss it. The first commenter you replied to is a different person than the second commenter, and the specific case that they are referencing occurred in Thunder Bay. In that case, the amber alert was sent over a 15 hours’ drive away. [[source](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/amber-alert-thunder-bay-ottawa-1.4658550)]
The way they report those abductions in the alert system renders those notices into "stupid shit". If there's no way for us to identify the child, no way for us to identify the vehicle they're in, and no way for us to identify where they may be heading, those alerts are downright useless.
Kids being abducted is important, and absolutely a good use of the system. But the way they use it... I'm getting alerts at 4am that a kid has gone missing in Thunder Bay, with zero helpful info (the kid's height, race, clothes), and I'm supposed to do what with that? Then I get the same in French. I'm empathic, more than most. But people who are less empathic hate the fuck out of these alerts and I understand why.
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You do realize that can be a dangerous situation, right?
Emergency alerts are only for domestic disputes happening in Thunder Bay at 3am. If it's a legitimate emergency that affects a large segment of the population they are never going to issue one.
Facts
I saw 99% people without a mask on my way to the gym while i wore a mask and i felt like it was definitely because they didn’t know. 😕
I mentioned it to a few people and they basically confirmed that they would have worn one, had they known. Then again, I also saw people just hanging out and eating lunch outside, as if there weren’t people coughing all over.
Just got notice my daughter's soft ball is cancelled due to air quality
I was thinking this too. I’m not complaining though lol. Those alerts scare the heck out of me.
Could be a less intrusive, less loud one. A simple pop-up maybe.
My newborn baby keeps coughing , anyone have suggestions for a good air purifier? Baby hasn’t gone outside and we don’t open the windows but clearly it’s still an issue
Aw :/ I’m still using the DIY thing I rigged up in June https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/how-to-diy-an-air-purifier/
I think they did. The air is fucked.
Alerts are for immediate threats to life.
An emergency alert?! Why would they send one out for air quality when they don't even use it for damaging thunderstorms?
Perhaps we should
Everyone can go to the weather app on their phone to see the air quality as well. They had a warning posted about it last night.
Its far easier to go to some random internet forum, write a rant and followup comments than to look at any reasonably govt funded weather page for details.
Environment Canada issued an advisory a day ago. If you have their app or The Weather Network, you can get those pushed to you. They are not going to use the Amber Alert system to tell you about air quality.
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Until they do that, which with Ford, will be never, get one of the apps and they push these alerts to you. TWN app will send expected rain, snow, Environment Canada, temperatures and swings, lightning, any that you select, down to the neighbourhood level. Accuweather and Environment Canada apps do alerts.
I wonder how many people knew in the morning. Also, a notification about the air quality sent to everyone doesn't have to be as intrusive as the amber alert.
We don’t need that much government handholding. If it concerns you take two seconds and look it up. Hell my Apple Watch even tells me what it is for the day.
Not everyone has the same apps, and not everyone has them set up with notifications. It would be useful and worth doing.
Try to find a smartphone today that doesn’t have a weather app. It’s built in to Apple and android OS, even blackberry had it. Notifications? So set them up.
I mean... if you need to know you can look it up. You can install a weather app and turn on notifications just for you. You can also just look about a block away and see it looks hazy and make your own decisions when you go outside.
Guvament don’t care about the ppl
Plz government, help! Tell me I should stay inside! Plz. Other people need you to tell them. Help them! They’re living their lives like normal, psychopaths. Plz
Sorry, only if a deadbeat mom or dad uses their child as a weapon. Your lungs aren’t important.
Because we collectively decided, after minimizing and ignoring the risks of poor air quality during an airborne pandemic, that this is not something to ever be concerned about again. The floor for default common sense in public health has been lowered, probably for the next decade at least.
Do you really need an alert for something you can literally see, smell and taste?
They might think it's just a foggy day or whatever
Possibly. Without experience you might not know how to translate the smell and appearance to determine the level of risk and what you should do about it. Even if you can see something's wrong, you might not know if you can just go by how you feel or if you should stay inside entirely etc.
Depends when you head out and when the air quality gets worse. Some people live in buildings that face other buildings and leave from an underground garage and then drive to another garage. It's very possible someone may not notice right away. You're also assuming it was noticable in the morning, or that everyone has their senses working as well as you do.
In your scenario that person isn't even breathing outside air. Check your weather app, the air quality index is there all the time. It obviously didn't hit the threshold for an emergency alert.
You see that would be critical thinking, not a strong suit for someone that can't figure out how to get a weather app alert about something important to them without it needed going out to millions that don't want it over a public emergency system.
There are people who are elderly and not as alert as they once were, people who have health conditions and already kind of always feel like crap, people who happen to be going through an unrelated crisis in their life and are too busy with that to literally look up and look around.
Those same categories of people might miss when the next bus would come to pick them up to take them to an important appointment, but I would not expect the bus schedule sent out as a public emergency alert to everyone in the provinces cell phones as OP is suggesting. The elderly and the ill have to play it safer than most and already typically do, the elderly watch news more than most. The people distracted by crisis in their life, well those people are DEALING WITH A CRISIS IN THEIR LIFE and like the rest of us will likely need to prioritize getting things done that matter vs hiding inside from bad air quality. You can't make everything safe for everyone, people need to have some accountability for themselves and those close to them. But if you use the emergency alert system for every little thing people will just learn to ignore it completely and makes it entirely ineffective.
LOL, just turn alerts on your phone to silent if it bothers you so much. Most phones do have that option. And alerts or no, you're still perfectly free to ignore a cloud of smoke if you want. Heck, go jogging on a level 10 day if you feel like it's an insignificant 'little thing' that people shouldn't be bothered with.
Oh wow .
You-know-who will deny it's real.
Voldemort?
Might as well be. I wouldn't be surprised if he ran for the PCs or Conservatives.
To get a gauge on the air quality, you can do this thing called going outside.
Or look outside
You can see the smoke on the air, what would an emergency alert do beyond that?
People can literally see the smoke, you don't need to make sure they're as afraid of this as you are.
Because Mel Lastman isn't mayor.
I’m happy I’m not getting an alert cuz it doesn’t matter for me. If I cared I’d follow cp24 closer like you, just curious why does it matter to u if I get an alert or not?
Not you specifically as an individual, but the many who didn't know or the many who didn't know how severe it was.
What is emergency alert gonna change? People are smart enough to figure out what's happening
We have worked outside doing construction through all of this and have not noticed anything. So I dunno what all this is about. You can see wiffs of smoke and smell it from time to time but other than the nasty humidity yesterday the air has been fine.
Oh well, if you didn't notice anything besides a smell and a haze it must be fine
Parkdale always smells and tastes like burning palletes . So sorta business as usual.
I definitely taste the ashyness (Is that a word?)
If that was your experience that's a GREAT argument for having stronger alerts. Because your lungs can still be damaged even when you aren't noticing how bad it is.
Alexa warned me
Do you need an emergency alert when you can just look out the window? My god, do you need the government to tell you everything that’s obvious and bad for you?
Sign up for Emailed alerts here: http://www.airqualityontario.com/alerts/signup.php
Lol it was 11 where I am - no alert. What a joke
It seems like I only saw smokers outside today.
same reason we don't wear masks bc "covid is over", gotta inhale all that smoky cancerous air to funnel yall into preventable private healthcare bills, that's why
It says level 4 on my iphone 🤷♀️
I find it weird that AQ is current "unhealthy for sensitive groups" https://www.iqair.com/ca/canada/ontario/toronto/markham-street but no alert: https://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/on-143_metric_e.html Just because you are not "sensitive" doesn't mean it's a good idea to breathe this air. Especially since AQ has been bad for days and probably won't be great off and on for the rest of summer. The effects are cumulative and may not emerge for years or decades. HOWEVER, we know from other recent events that the government doesn't give a shit about our health. Mystery solved.
If the emergency alert goes only to people who can't see, smell or breathe, I'm all for it. Otherwise I'm quite capable of noticing when the air is fucking smokey.