The smoke is gone. But its specter lingers.

Or at least it should.

It’s been just over a week since that unsettling smoky haze from Canada’s wildfires left our region. If it feels longer ago, chalk it up to our eagerness to put such unpleasantness behind us and get on with our lives. We seem to want to dismiss this kind of incident as one of those random occurrences that come and mostly go, almost like it was a mirage.

We’ve seen this movie before and it rarely ends well. Explore the South Shore for evidence that we have responded appropriately to the ravages inflicted 14 years ago by Superstorm Sandy. Remind yourself about all the 1,000-year floods and 100-year storms that now come every few years, upending statistical models that shaped public policy and opinion for generations.

In this most recent case, our collective amnesia is about an event just three years ago, when our skies turned orange and our air became thick with soot and particulate matter from another set of Canadian wildfires. We need to remember........

© Newsday