There were long delays to flights on and off Martha’s Vineyard, emergency services across the Island were swamped with callers reporting fires, and a health warning was issued when a thick pall of smoke settled across Martha’s Vineard yesterday.

But there was little local authorities could do about it; the fires which disrupted the Memorial Day start of the summer season were not on the Island, but hundreds of miles away in Canada.

The greatest effect was felt at the Martha’s Vineyard airport, where pilots were required to use their instruments for takeoffs and landings, as the heavy smoke cut visibility to about 1.5 miles. Dozens of flights were delayed as a result.

The Memorial Day weekend is typically one of the busiest times of year for the airport, with hundreds of aircraft movements.

“It depends on the weather, of course,” said airport manager Sean Flynn. “And this weekend, the weather was good.”

That was, until the smoke blew in early yesterday.

By mid afternoon, said Mr. Flynn, there was a long queue of flights awaiting takeoff.

“We’re having great delays here. Right now, we have about 25 aircraft in line for takeoff,” he said, when the Gazette contacted him shortly before 2 p.m.

“Because the pilots all have to use instruments, they have to wait to be accepted into the air space, and that is holding things up a lot.

“It’s almost worse than if we had heavy rain.”

The problem, however, was quite the reverse — dry weather in central and northern Quebec, which resulted in more than 50 fires, which have collectively burned out more than 700 square kilometers — more than 170,000 acres — of forest in the past week. Eight of the fires remained out of control yesterday, and north-westerly winds sent smoke across the north-eastern United States.

The National Weather Service issued an air quality alert for most of New England, as smoke shrouded much of Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire. People with respiratory problems were warned to limit their outdoor activities.

“We’ve been inundated with calls,” said a spokeswoman for the Island’s Communications Center.

None of the calls, however, were for medical emergencies, just people concerned that there must be a nearby fire.

She could not say exactly how many calls had come in.

“Let’s just say lots and lots.”

She said the state fire marshall had contacted the center to inform them of the source of the smoke. They then had paged all the Island’s firefighters and EMS workers to let them know the situation.

Tisbury fire chief John Schilling said he personally had received at least a half-dozen calls.

“But the com center was deluged,” he said.

He said it was the kind of situation in which it would be useful to have a “reverse 911” system operating.

Under such a system, emergency authorities can contact residents to alert them to crises — or, in cases such as this, the lack of a crisis.

Maybe next time. All six Island towns, plus the county, now are onboard with the establishment of a reverse 911 network, and training for the various local administrators begins this week.

The network is due to be operational in about a month, although it will take some more time for the authorities to build up their database of phone numbers, said Emergency Management Coordinator Peter Martell.