CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — If you’ve stepped outside lately, it’s hard to miss the haziness in the sky followed by an unfamiliar smell.
“I never really would’ve assumed that wildfires in Canada would’ve had such an adverse effect on Cleveland, or in the Midwest,” said Zach Perrier, who's a local resident.
“The smoke is just making me sick,” said Angela Dobbis, another Cleveland Heights resident.
To not take any chances with her health, Angela Dobbis decided to wear a mask on Wednesday, which her daughter says she wishes she would’ve done before leaving the house.
“I really didn’t know it was going to be like this,” said Regina Milam.
Due to poor air quality conditions across communities like Cleveland Heights, city leaders have been relying on regional sensors to understand how their area is being impacted.
But Mayor Khalil Seren told News 5 he and others felt they didn’t have an accurate depiction since they’re outside city limits, so officials took it a step further with this localized tool used to track harmful particles in the air.
“These are ingenious devices. They are hooked up to our wireless signal, allowing us to view these things remotely,” Seren said.
Currently, there are five air sensors located throughout central neighborhoods in Cleveland Heights.
They’re pretty small, but the mayor says it gives them an accurate depiction.
“It gives us a lot of data to be able to take a look at our activities and how they impact our environment,” said Seren.
Seren said the city installed these air sensors this past May.
Shortly after, we started experiencing air quality issues, which is something Ananya Kumar said she didn’t ever expect to happen here.
“Every time I go back to India, it kind of looks like this, very smoky and it kind of has a smell, but it’s like worse than the air quality there, which is known to be pretty polluted, the area where I’m from, so I kind of was not expecting that here,” said Ananya Kumar.
Still, the mayor says their proactivity with this measure is the first step to keeping the community informed.
“Our climate will become unpredictable based on our previous experience, and the result of that is that we want to be prepared,” said Seren.
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