‘It smelled like a bonfire in the house’: Wildfire smoke raises health concerns [video]

Southeast New Brunswick residents awoke this week to the smell of smoke blowing in from an out-of-control wildfire in Nova Scotia.

“My little boy woke up crying and it smelled like a bonfire in the house,” one area resident commented Monday in a social media post.

Later in the week, Environment Canada issued air quality statements for a wide area of southern New Brunswick, as the wildfire in the Annapolis Valley continued to burn.

The phenomenon raises questions about health and wellbeing. How can people protect themselves from wildfire smoke, while also trying to keep cool during increasingly frequent heat waves brought on by the climate crisis? And what is the role of government in protecting its most vulnerable residents?

Airborne particulate matter is a form of pollution emitted from sources including wildfires. Even short periods of exposure — up to 24 hours — have been linked to premature mortality, increased heart and lung-related hospital admissions, bronchitis, asthma attacks, and other health issues.

In particular, infants, children, pregnant women, seniors, smokers, and people with chronic heart and lung conditions should avoid exposure to heavy smoke, according to provincial government guidelines.

The Maritimes aren’t typically associated with wildfires, as opposed to hotspots like B.C., but researchers expect them to become more frequent in this region due to factors including global warming, which has already lengthened the burning season.

Temperatures in Moncton surpassed 25.2 on Monday afternoon, with a humidex of 29 C. Earlier this month, heat warnings covered much of New Brunswick. The humidex reached 42 C on Aug. 11 in Moncton, for example, while out-of-control wildfires burned just outside of that city and Miramichi.

Air quality conditions on Monday were forecasted to become “high risk” in smokey areas of southeast New Brunswick, and Environment Canada cautioned that some people might experience serious health effects including “wheezing, chest pains or severe cough.”

As the winds shifted, smoke from the out-of-control wildfire in the Annapolis Valley drifted east. By Wednesday, special air quality statements covered a wide swath of land including Lunenburg, Kings, Hants and Halifax counties.

On Friday, smoke was blowing across the Bay of Fundy and affecting air quality in Saint John County and in Fundy National Park.

Annapolis County itself remained under an even more serious air quality warning by Friday afternoon.

Environment Canada has advised residents in smokey areas to keep their windows and doors closed “as much as possible” and to limit time outdoors. However, the federal agency advises that “when there is an extreme heat event occurring with poor air quality,” they should “prioritize keeping cool.”

It’s a situation that may pose a dilemma for poor or working-class people with serious health conditions who lack AC or air purificiation systems.

Earlier this summer, anti-poverty activists with NB ACORN launched their “AC for all” campaign, calling, in part, for “all levels of government to create programs that ensure low-income families have affordable access to cooling their homes.” They launched the campaign just as one of their leaders in Moncton was hospitalized for heat exhaustion.

Air conditioning is safe to use during smokey conditions — provided that it doesn’t suck air into the building. Examples include mini-splits or central AC systems that recirculate indoor air, according to the Moncton Firefighters Association.

On the other hand, window units and other systems pulling in air from outdoors may worsen conditions in the home, and air exchangers should be turned off or set to recirculation mode.

Environment Canada has advised people to use a “clean, good quality air filter” in home ventilation systems or to use a “certified portable air cleaner that can filter fine particles.” Air purification systems can be costly, but research shows that inexpensive DIY air cleaners are an effective alternative.

During heat alerts, the province has advised people to “consider going to public spaces that have air conditioning and filtered air” if they don’t have it at home, such as libraries, community centres, malls and churches. But for people working from home or those with mobility issues, that might be a tall order.

Local governments sometimes offer comfort centres, also called cooling centres, to help people cope with the heat — at least 15 communities reportedly opened this kind of facility as wildfires in New Brunswick reached their peak earlier this month.

During a media briefing about the wildfire situation on Monday afternoon, the NB Media Co-op asked Premier Susan Holt what the role of government should be in these circumstances.

She said, in part, that the province works closely with municipalities and other organizations to “make sure that public infrastructure is place” such as cooling centres, and to reduce the cost of home appliances such as mini-splits.

The latter was an apparent reference to a program for homeowners with a gross income under $70,000 — renters aren’t eligible.

Asked if she had any message for people such as renters who might be noticing the smell of smoke in hot apartments, Holt referenced the Irishtown fire. That blaze burned some 54 hectares of land just outside of Moncton earlier this month before firefighters brought it under control.

“The community came together, particularly the Maple Hills community, to set up a place where people could go, where they could get access to air conditioning, cooler temperatures, there were showers, there were water and food, there were supports in place,” Holt said.

Maple Hills councillor-at-large Eric Murray said he was told that only a “handful of people” actually ended up using the facility, which was open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. for two days at a local community centre.

That might signal that most local residents were already well-prepared at home, at least in the Maple Hill area, or perhaps that people just weren’t aware of the resources available.

Murray, who has lived most of his life in the Maple Hills area, was among the roughly 1,500 people who were under an evacuation notice, an unprecedented situation for the community. “It’s something we’ll have to adapt to,” he said.

He noted that Maple Hills relied on volunteers to run the cooling centre, and that it’s “not easy” to find people to do that kind of work.

It remains to be seen whether those kinds of local responses will be enough as Maritimers face a hotter, smokier world.

This article was updated at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, to include information about wildfire smoke in Saint John County and Fundy Park. 

David Gordon Koch is a journalist with the NB Media Co-op. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS).