State environmental regulators warn unhealthy air conditions could persist through the week.
Riding his bike home from Walmart, 72-year-old Fred Ingersoll made his way home through Island City as wildfire smoke hung over the town. Two baskets attached to his bike held groceries he’d put off buying for days because of the poor air quality.
“Put on my mask and hope for the best. My lungs are already bad anyhow,” he said, an American flag waving from the back of his bike.
He’s a cancer survivor with a pulmonary disease, he said. Ingersoll relies on a bike to get around and he’s lived in Island City, a town of about 1,100 people, since 1998. He can’t remember the air being this bad in years.
“This is when you really pray for rain,” he said.
While his pocket of Eastern Oregon near La Grande has been particularly apocalyptic this week, all across Oregon the state’s Department of Environmental Quality has issued air quality advisories warning of unhealthy conditions, from the Portland metro area and Salem to Hermiston and Ontario.
The advisories are in place until at least Wednesday night.
But with the National Weather Service reporting air quality index readings in several Eastern Oregon towns that are unhealthy not just for sensitive groups like seniors and people with health issues, DEQ spokesperson Jennifer Flint said it’s likely the agency will extend the region’s advisory through the week.
In Union County, where Ingersoll rides his bike, about one in four residents are 65 or older, census data shows.
Meal service at the Union County Senior Center is usually busy, said its operations manager Tony Carman. But because of the smoke, fewer seniors are coming into the center for meals, and are instead relying on home delivery service.
“There’s either people who have concerns or breathing health issues, COPD or on oxygen,” Carman said. “A lot of those folks seem to be kind of hunkering down and staying in as much as they can.”
This might just be the beginning, said Nick Vora, emergency manager for Union County Emergency Services.
“We’re likely to be in for the long haul this summer in regards to smoke impacts and we could see air quality similar to what we have now for the next several months,” Vora said.
Wildfires across the state are degrading air quality, and in Eastern Oregon, the biggest driver is the Hagen Fire, near Umatilla and Union counties, Vora said.
He worked with the Oregon Department of Human Services and the Red Cross to establish an air quality shelter at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton. But as of now, there aren’t any shelters in Union County to the east, he said.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.