‘I’ve never seen it like this before’: Star City gets engulfed in smoke from wildfires

ROANOKE, Va. – People woke up to a very unfamiliar sight in the Star City on Wednesday.

A haze spread over and engulfed Roanoke mid-week as smoke from the Canadian wildfires continue to have an effect on air quality throughout the United States.

Angie Trivett comes back to her hometown of Roanoke at least once a year to visit family. She and her girls decided to take a trip up to the Roanoke Star ... a well-known place to see the skyline of Roanoke and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“As my daughter had said, as we were looking … she said you can almost see the mountains but it’s kind of foggy. I was like well I don’t think it’s foggy I’m not sure what that is,” Trivett said.

Trivett has gone to the Mill Mountain Star ever since she was a child. Only on Wednesday, it was a much different sight.

“I have never ever seen it like this unless you come early in the morning and there’s a fog hanging or something like that. I’ve never seen it like this before,” Trivett said.

It was a very similar experience for Jared Howell and his daughter Haven.

“We left Chick-Fil-A and I was driving down 460 and I thought something was on fire. Then I came up here and saw the whole valley was fogged out…so it was something. Something I ain’t ever seen before,” Howell said.

The smoke from the wildfires have continued to pass through the United State and even has made its way over the Atlantic into Europe.

With smoke comes poorer air quality. Roanoke at times was deemed an unhealthy air quality. Dr. Puneet Chopra, the medical director and chairman of LewisGale Medical Center’s Emergency Department says it can impact some groups at risk.

“So that’s why, especially with chronic conditions with lungs, asthma, COPD, heart disease, anything like that with the heart and lungs, you really got to take care,” Dr. Copra said.

Luckily the smoke will roll its way out of the Star City by the end of the work week.

See viewer-submitted pictures of the haze below!

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