Bay Area residents concerned about smoky air from Northern California wildfires

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Smoky air spread across the Bay Area on Saturday and on Sunday, a Spare the Air Alert was been issued due to concerns about the smog.

People with respiratory problems were asked to stay indoors.

Mt. Diablo looked like a Mirage, hazy, even visible for much of the morning because of smoke. "It smelled like a campfire at our house when we were outside and the air was really smoky so we weren't sure what was going on. We had heard about the fires that were far away from here but it was still causing a lot of smoke by our house in Concord," Amanda Mazza said.

"We thought that it might be a fire locally, until we went online and noticed it was just winds blowing in from the other areas," Pleasant Hill resident Kimberly Wenzel said.

But hundreds, even thousands, of residents across the East Bay thought they could be in danger.

Local police and fire agencies were swamped by emergency calls from Antioch to Livermore. "We tweeted out this morning that unless you actually saw a fire, if you actually saw flames, call 911. But otherwise don't call 911," Contra Costa Fire Protection District's Robert Marshall said.

The heavy haze hung over the North Bay, the East Bay and along the Peninsula.

"We're getting summertime ozone due to warm temperatures and very low winds and then we're also seeing some of the smoke from wildfires in Northern California find its way into the Bay Area, so we're having elevated PM or soot levels," Bay Area Air Quality Management District's Ralph Borrman said.

So Sunday was declared a Spare the Air day.

PHOTOS: Smoke visible from Jerusalem Fire in Lake County

For more stories about the wildfires breaking out across California, click here.