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New Zealand residents call police over 'orange haze' from Australian bushfires

Australia’s bushfire crisis is starting to impact a whole other country with a city 2000km from Sydney cloaked by eerie orange skies.

Police in Auckland, on New Zealand’s North Island, have copped an influx of calls from concerned residents asking what’s causing the hue.

But the apocalyptic scenes are due to smoke from Australia’s bushfires sweeping across the sea and invading our neighbouring island country.

Due to the number of calls received about the haze clogging up emergency lines, police have been forced to ask residents to refrain from calling them to ask about the orange skies.

Twitter has been flooded with pictures from Auckland, with one saying they can smell it in the city too.

Some have described the orange skies as a “surreal sunset”, while others have expressed shock over the fact they could experience such impacts thousands of kilometres away.

“A whole lot of ash has blown over Auckland now and it’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced... Everything outside is just yellow/orange and it feels so off. Can’t even imagine what the atmosphere is like over the ditch if this is here,” one person tweeted.

Pictured are orange skies over a highway in Auckland caused by the Australian bushfires.
Cars travel with their lights on under tobacco-coloured skies over Auckland. Source: Getty

Another said it felt “horribly claustrophobic”.

“No escape from it, no novelty in it. Just an underlying primal panic ‘please make it stop’. My soul aches for every living thing caught in Australian fires,” they said.

The air quality in Auckland is currently moderate, compared to the rest of the country where the air quality level is good.

The real-time Air Quality Index says there is moderate health concern in Auckland for people unusually sensitive to air pollution.

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