The Canadian wildfire smoke that covered the state last week caused more than bad air quality. An estimated $4 billion in earnings was lost as the plume created health concerns and closed businesses.
According to a report from the Anderson Economic Group, Michigan lost billions in direct income losses for residents and businesses. The number doesn’t include long-term health effects or loss of resources.
Patrick Anderson, the CEO of the group, said the group is still monitoring information and the number might go up.
“It's a big problem to not be able to go outside for three days,” he said. “Particularly if your business depends on people being outside or if you needed to do some agricultural things that required air.”
He said much of Michigan's economy requires people to go outside, and if Michigan continues struggling with wildfire smoke, there could be major losses for the tourism industry.
“We don't want our state to have the reputation of being one where you might spend a lot of money and reserve a place to travel here and get here and not be able to go outdoors,” he said.
The Anderson Group is a consulting group in Michigan and specializes in public policy work. Estimating damages is not new to the 30-year-old company, he said.
“Michigan is our home state and a very important part of the economy of Michigan are industries like agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, transportation,” he said. “All these things involve people going outside or working outside or getting a lot of air from outside into large plants and for that reason, it was important to us.”
Anderson said even though the plume of smoke over the state was somewhat short-lived, it had consequences.
“If you're looking carefully at what's going on in the state and you have an incident like we went through that essentially involved telling 10 million people that they couldn't go outside for two or three or four days, of course it was going to have a big impact on life and the ability to earn income,” he said.
The group looked at several factors, including the closures of amusement parks, public parks, and outdoor events. They also looked at which areas had the most particulate matter, which posed health risks and caused several businesses to close their doors.
He said using past indications of how dense particulate matter affected residents’ ability to earn income helped inform their estimates.
Michigan’s losses were double Wisconsin’s and he said this is due to Michigan getting the brunt of the smoke.
“The location of a lot of the wildfires in Canada and the prevailing winds put a lot of that smoke through Michigan and you end up with Detroit mentioned as the most polluted city,” he said.
Detroit’s air quality index values were the highest the city has ever recorded as the smoke set in.
Anderson said he hopes policy leaders use the estimates to begin working on solutions with Canada and other states.
“It is something that would have a very severe effect on us if it was to happen frequently,” he said. “I think every Michigander was affected.”
