Unhealthy Air Quality Impacting Downtown Sacramento Businesses
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — It's a new normal in many Northern California cities, plenty of empty seats at restaurants as diners choose to eat indoors instead of out.
"No eating for us outside tonight," said Jesse Hernandez while visiting Sacramento from Stockton.
Who suffers? Businesses.
"At this point, it's really slow, so we are just waiting for customers to come in," said Daisy Zepeda who works in midtown.
Some closing early and others closed altogether.
"It's Friday night, and Friday night you want to go explore," said Angela Linskiy.
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She came down from Antelope to find the open aired Golden Road Brewery in midtown shut down until the smoke clears out.
"Today I felt like it would be better, but no. I'm surprised it's actually closed because it hasn't been," she said.
Just to put in perspective of just how bad the air has been. We put a brand new filter in a single home air conditioning unit and not even 24 hours later, it had a haze of brown.
But downtown, Golden1Center visitors packed it in to see Kevin Hart, regardless of the haze. Michael Shaw, an asthmatic, said he was not about to miss Hart because of the haze.
But still many worried about the smoke.
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"We paid extra to get to the arena, so we could just get to the car fast," said a woman going to the show.
Officials said spending one day in Sacramento is equivalent to smoking 11 cigarettes. And while it's a picture-perfect night to ice skate with wide open ice, health officials warn overexertion in this smoke is downright dangerous.
"I'm born and raised in Sacramento and this is the worst air we've had ever," Shaw added.
Many are hoping relief will soon be in the air.
