Above, photos of some of the 343 firefighters who fell on 9/11. Courtesy of FDNY.
Although it has been 17 years since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) on 9/11, those who were in the area of Ground Zero that day and for months afterward are still living under the shadow of the “Dust Cloud” and its contaminants. This dust has already caused thousands more of responders and civilians to die since 9/11 and have made many more others ill. No one knows when this problem will stop escalating or how many other illnesses may be identified as WTC related. The consensus in the literature among health professionals, researchers, and academia is that the dust could present new dangers for a generation and even beyond if workers and responders brought the dust home.
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Many believe that the country will not prepared for such an event in the future because there is no established protocol standard. Adding to the confusion and seriousness of the situation, experts say, are the following conditions. Responders and workers did not have on adequate personal protective equipment, the Federal Government and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not act quickly enough or in a manner equal to the seriousness of the health threat. The EPA first centered on the dangers of asbestos and did not have the proper equipment to measure for other dangerous substances and chemicals.
Nearly 10,000 first responders and others who were in the WTC area have been diagnosed with cancer. It is anticipated that by the end of 2018, more people will have died from toxic exposure from 9/11 than were killed on 9/11. “We’re nervous,” said Dr. Michael Crane, medical director of the World Trade Center Health Program Clinical Center of Excellence at Mount Sinai. In 2017, 23 current or former members of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) died of 9/11-related diseases. That’s the same number of NYPD members that perished on Sept. 11, 2001.
On 9/11, 343 firefighters died, and more than half of that number, 182, have died of 9/11-related illnesses in the past 17 years. In the past year alone, 18 were lost. Nearly eight times as many New York City police officers have died of 9/11-related illnesses since the attacks than were killed on September 1, 2001. Twenty-three were killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and 156 have since died of illnesses contracted from the toxins in the air surrounding Ground Zero. 1
At a forum held at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum recently, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Rupa Bhattacharyya, special master of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, encouraged federal law enforcement officers to register for the Compensation Fund. Few agents have done so to date, and the agency has lost 15 members to 9/11 related illnesses.1
John Feal, a former construction worker who helped with the WTC rescue and recovery effort and founder of the Feal Good Foundation, says that 63 responders died from WTC-related illnesses in 2018, the greatest loss since 2008, the year he began to track the deaths. Feal and his Foundation campaigned in Washington, DC, (with victims suffering from the WTC illnesses, for the passage of the Zadroga Act in 2010 and for its extension before it expired in 2015 until 2090. The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act provides for a Victims Compensation Fund and health-care and health-tracking programs. By 2013, some 50 cancers were included in Zadroga coverage. Information on the program is available at https://www.cdc.gov/wtc/index.html.
In the aftermath of 9/11, people responded to the WTC from all over the country. Therefore, WTC-related disease has become a national issue and the country has come to look upon these deaths as “WTC line-of-duty-deaths.” The deaths of these individuals have been memorialized within their agencies. In recent times, however, other entities have been undertaking initiatives to honor these individuals as well.
In the 9/11 Responders Remembered Park, in Nesconset, New York, for example, are three six-foot-high walls on which are inscribed the name of 588 responders believed to have died from 9/11-associated illnesses. The park was co-founded by John Feal, and founder the FealGood Foundation, According to Feal, 99 more names will be added at this year’s ceremony on September 17. 2
Westchester and Rockland Counties, New York, and other New York area communities are contemplating erecting a permanent memorial to these 9/11 rescue and recovery workers. Last year, Westchester’s 9/11 remembrance ceremony included the names of 11 first responders who had died from rescue-related illnesses. The county executive’s office is compiling a list that so far includes around 15 names to be read during this year’s service.2
A May 30, 2018, press release from the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, advised, “the conceptual design for the historic evolution of the 9/11 Memorial that honors those who are sick or have died from exposure to World Trade Center toxins was unveiled today on the 16th anniversary of the formal end of rescue and recovery operations at Ground Zero.” The new dedicated space, the release explained, will be integrated into the Memorial plaza and the design includes a pathway that will be part of a grassy area called the Memorial Glade, occupying the southwest side of the plaza, just west of the Survivor Tree.” Jon Stewart, former The Daily Show host is assisting with the fundraising.3
“We Will Never Forget”
“New York no longer comes to a virtual standstill for the anniversary as it did in the years immediately after the attacks. Across the United States, the anniversary no longer dominates the national news as it once did, and people have long stopped avoiding plane travel on September 11,” says Cameron Stewart, an associate editor of The Australian. This sentiment and observation is of concern to some during this anniversary commemoration.4
This year, the first Fire Department of New York (FDNY) chief to respond to the WTC on 9/11, Assistant Chief Joe Pfeifer, retired from the FDNY in July. “With each year, as people move on, 9/11 is morphing from a lived experience to a piece of history,” Pfeifer said in his retirement remarks. He lost his younger brother Kevin in the WTC tragedy.4
Although “We will never forget” is still the mission for those who have lived through the 9/11 attacks, it is being recognized that the event will fade in the national memory in generations removed from the live event. 9/11 say some will become a historical event like the attack on Pearl Harbor, and efforts will have to be made to educate young people about these attacks and their significance for our country.
Jeff Cash, fire chief in Cherryville, North Carolina, who been committed to ensuring that no one forgets what happened on 9/11, reports that the people attending the community’s annual 9/11 remembrance event have been fewer each year. This year’s ceremony is on 9/11 at 9 a.m. He is among those who believe it is important to educate people, especially the younger children, about what happened on 9/11.5
Identity of Victims
An ongoing effort to identify the unidentified remains of more than 1,000 victims of 9/11 has been given impetus this year. So far, only 60 percent of the 9/11 victims have been identified, says Mark Desire, the assistant director of forensic biology for New York City’s medical examiner’s office.
The commitment to accomplish this sacred task, he notes, “is as great as it was in 2001. That commitment to making these identifications has not wavered.” The agency, he says, has been identifying one victim a year lately. However, he reports that new DNA technology has come on the horizon and that the agency will retest the more than 7,000 unidentified remains with the new technology. “This is a very close-to-home project,” he says. “Seventeen years later, there’s a lot of hugging and crying with the families.” He notes that “there were no hopes in the past for samples being identified now.”
A Shift in the Call to Service
Perhaps the most contemporary and original 9/11 anniversary-related action taken by an American this year is by Rich Clikeman, of Doylestown Township, Pennsylvania. It is a letter to the editor he wrote titled “9/11 legacy, that courage is needed today.”
Clikeman begins by asking if the reader has been to the 9/11 Museum. He describes it:
“It lies nestled in a cavern beneath fountains streaming down the shear faces of two sculpted gorges tracing the footprints of the fallen towers, of the fallen hopes and dreams of so many.”
He then takes the reader on an imaginary journey in which they walk along Ladder Company 3′s hook-and-ladder truck, “starting at its barely recognizable cab. Like some banner battered by the winds of time, this noble chariot of fires contorts, shredding first into metallic ribbons, and then, unbelievably, into thin streamers.”
Then they reach a “giant horseshoe cut from a massive girder, freezing forever that moment when a raging inferno toppled the impossibly strong underpinnings of the Twin Towers.”
Clikeman and the reader go back in time to 9/11. They take in the chaos, FDNY rescuers arriving setting aside their dread of what awaited aloft in a heroic effort to save the lives of thousands fleeing the conflagration above — innocents from 90 countries, folks like you and me, with families and creeds and thoughts of tomorrow.” They recall the 332 firefighters, 60 police officers, and eight paramedics who would never make it home. “And more, many more of our finest citizens would put themselves in harm’s way to rescue, recover and rebuild — hands clasped, eyes blind to race, religion and origin — hearts entwined.”
Then Clikeman asks the reader to fast-forward to today. He compares the scenes. What do they see? “Our towering democracy, so familiar and seemingly unshakeable, has been struck, blindsided at its highest levels. …And the temperature is rising fast. The girders of democracy are softening, threatening to contort into a horseshoe that will be lucky for no one…
He declares that what he sees “leaves the rescue work to, well, us…He related “the good news: “the edifice of democracy can be entered at all levels.” He urges us (Americans) to “volunteer at the level and in the way that makes sense for us. He asserts: “The legacy of 9/11 demands it. And — like those who went all in that day — you are up to the challenge.”
References
1. “Deaths from 9/11 diseases will soon outnumber those lost on that fateful day”
Nancy Cutler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News, September 6, 2018.
2. “Communities seek ways to memorialize those sickened by World Trade Center’s toxins; Nancy Cutler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News; https://www.lohud.com/story/opinion/perspective/2018/09/06/westchester-nyc-rockland-find-ways-honor-sick-9-11-responders/1155994002/e
4. Cameron Stewart, also a U. S. contributor for Sky News Australia; https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/seventeen-years-after-911-time-has-changed-our-view-of-the-horror/news-story/0c852234a27c2a2fa9cba611e477e2e7 .
5. http://www.gastongazette.com/news/20180906/cherryville-chief-17-years-later-we-must-remember-911
6. https://www.abcactionnews.com/newsy/identifying-911-victims-is-still-a-priority-17-years-later
7. http://www.theintell.com/opinion/20180904/opinion-911-legacy-that-courage-is-needed-today
Mary Jane Dittmar is senior associate editor of Fire Engineering and conference manager of FDIC. Before joining the magazine in January 1991, she served as editor of a trade magazine in the health/nutrition market and held various positions in the educational and medical advertising fields. She has a bachelor’s degree in English/journalism and a master’s degree in communication arts.
