Mayor’s Response to Wildfire Smoke Was Sluggish, New York Officials Say

As a carpet of acrid smoke darkened New York City’s skies and turned them orange last month, many New Yorkers looked to their city’s leaders for immediate guidance on how to stay safe, but were frustrated when they received none.

Mayor Eric Adams and other officials have reacted defensively to accusations that they were not proactive enough during a crisis that brought historically unhealthy air to the city. They have repeatedly said that New York had never faced anything like the smoke conditions, and that they did their best to respond to a threat they could never have anticipated.

Yet at a City Council hearing on Wednesday, the message from Council members and the city’s public advocate was clear: A city that has long been warning of the dangers of climate change did not move quickly enough to warn New Yorkers of the smoke or provide resources to mitigate its effects.

“This was the first of its kind,” said Gale Brewer, the chair of the Council’s Committee on Oversight and Investigations. “But it didn’t come out of nowhere.”

Still, the city’s commissioner for emergency management, Zach Iscol, continued to defend his agency’s “robust” response. When confronted with perceived hiccups, he laid the blame on imperfect forecasting from state officials, which he suggested limited the city’s actions until the worst of the smoke had arrived.

The city’s decisions, he said, were “based on the science, and we trust the science.”

At the same time, he acknowledged that the city was re-evaluating its response as it developed a formal protocol for future air quality emergencies, saying: “You never pitch a perfect game.”

Scientists have said that New York City could again experience dangerous smoke conditions as climate change exacerbates an already intense wildfire crisis. Hundreds of fires are still burning in Canada, which is facing a historically destructive wildfire season in which 21 million acres of land have so far burned, according to officials.

New York was not the only city to grapple with orange skies and polluted air in early June. A convergence of weather patterns pushed wildfire smoke from Canada into the eastern United States, where it lingered for days. But on brief periods on June 6 and 7, New York’s air quality was ranked as the worst of any city in the world, according to IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company.

On June 7, the city’s air quality index — the Environmental Protection Agency’s measure of air pollution — hit a historical high of 484, according to officials. The index tops out at 500; any number above 300 is considered hazardous to the general public.

Officials have stressed the need for greater preparation as the city adapts to severe weather patterns intensified by climate change. The hearing on Wednesday came a day after New York City’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, released a report that denounced Mr. Adams and his team for being “wholly unprepared,” and included recommendations to address future similar emergencies.

Mr. Adams, in an appearance on Fox 5’s morning show, brushed off the report and scoffed at Mr. Williams’s criticisms. “Think about it for a moment,” he said. “What we should have done, put out the fires? Come on.”

At the hearing, Mr. Iscol said that the city would work on a public campaign that would better educate New Yorkers on how to interpret the air quality index, and on steps they can take to mitigate health risks.

But he also warned that imperfect modeling might make it difficult for the city to predict the severity of future smoke conditions, limiting its ability to provide early warnings. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, which tracks air quality, only provides forecasts a day in advance, he said.

“Forecasting air quality is very, very difficult to do and scientifically is very complex,” Mr. Iscol said.

State officials began warning the public of hazy conditions from wildfire smoke on the afternoon of June 6, Mr. Iscol said. But their forecasts predicted air quality levels that fell short of what the city experienced and were below the benchmarks that make air “hazardous” for the general public, he said.

Yet Mr. Williams’s report cited how the New York Yankees were allowed to play a night game that drew 38,000 fans on June 6, even though the air quality at first pitch was higher than 150, and rose above 200, a level characterized as “very unhealthy” by the E.P.A.

Even as meteorologists predicted the smoke would linger longer than anticipated, Mr. Adams did not hold a news conference until June 7. Mr. Iscol defended that and other decisions.

But Mr. Williams and others sharply denounced the city for not moving more quickly when it became clear that conditions were going to be worse than expected.

“I think the administration is the only one that believes that everyone did the best that they could,” Mr. Williams said.