North Coast air quality to remain unhealthy for remainder of week

• If you or your children have asthma or other lung disease, make sure you follow your doctor’s directions about taking your medicines and following your asthma management plan. Call your doctor for advice if symptoms worsen or consider leaving the area.

• Run your home or car air-conditioner on recycle or recirculate. Keep the fresh air intake closed and the filter clean to prevent bringing additional smoke inside.

• If possible, seek shelter in buildings with filtered air or go to areas outside the region until smoke levels subside.

Although local residents are scheduled to return to work and school Tuesday following a subdued holiday weekend, air quality officials warn that dangerous and persistent smoke from the devastating wildfire in Butte County will — for the rest of the week — continue to choke skies over the North Coast and the Bay Area.

“It’s important that people recognize that even though it might look a little better outside the air quality is still very dangerous to human health,” Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins said Monday.

Hopkins said of particular concern is the high concentration of tiny particles invisible to the naked eye being spewed into the atmosphere by the Camp fire, which started last Thursday morning and quickly became the state’s most destructive wildfire, destroying more than 6,700 structures, including 6,453 homes.

The fire, which has decimated the town of Paradise, near Chico, is also the state’s deadliest fire, with 42 people declared dead as of Monday night.

The smoke and ash from the blaze at least 100 miles away in Butte County continues to rise high into the atmosphere, up to 15,000 feet, where offshore winds are blowing them over the Bay Area and Central Valley. From there, pollutants as small as 2.5 micrometers or less are pushed down toward the ground and remain there, according to weather experts.

Hopkins said such tiny air pollutants can go straight into a person’s bloodstream, with no filtration in the lungs. She said she’s taking precautions with her two children and her unborn child.

“As a parent, I’m sending my kids to school with masks,” Hopkins said. “And as someone who’s a member of a vulnerable population — I’m pregnant — I will also be wearing a mask when in the car and outside.”

Steve Anderson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey, said Monday that a ridge of high pressure offshore is causing wind in the upper atmosphere to push smoke from the Butte County fire south across the Bay Area. He said the smoke is migrating at higher elevations in the upper atmosphere.

“Even though the winds are up that high, you can still have smoke mixed down to the surface,” Anderson said, adding that these weather conditions are expected to remain the same for the rest of the week.

“We won’t see really improving conditions until next week, when we have more of an onshore flow from the west to east, blowing the smoke out of the Bay Area,” he said.

Anderson said temperatures are expected to remain normal through the week for this time of year, in the 30s and 40s at night and in the 60s and 70s during the day.

The lingering poor air quality and weather patterns on Monday prompted another Spare the Air alert by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Air quality officials said this wood burning ban will run through Friday. The ban includes the indoor or outdoor burning of manufactured fire logs or any other solid fuel.

The alert, the fifth since the devastating Camp fire began, bans wood burning throughout the nine-county Bay Area. Monday’s alert means the Bay Area will have 10 straight days of prohibition of wood burning, said Lisa Fasano, a spokeswoman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.