THE LONG, PAINFUL
TREKS HOME
THE 16 ACRE
DEBRIS FIELD CREATED BY THE COLLAPSED
WORLD TRADE
CENTER TWIN TOWERS
TAGS:
WORLD TRADE CENTER DUST FROM COLLAPSE,
9-11-01
RELATED ILLNESSES, DEATH TOLL CONTINUES TO CLIMB,
FDNY,
NYPD, PAPD, EMT, RESCUE & RECOVERY WORKERS,
58
“OFFICIALLY” RECOGNIZED 9-11 RELATED MALADIES
Safely Home
I am home in heaven, dear ones;
oh, so happy and so bright!
There is a perfect joy and
beauty in the everlasting light.
All the pain and grief is over,
every restless tossing passed;
I am now at peace forever,
safely home in heaven at last.
(First verse of a Catholic Prayer for the Dead)
(Thursday October 23, 2014,
Queens, NYC) On that fateful day 13
years ago St. Peter found himself a bit overwhelmed as thousands of dust
cloaked, breathless, tired and confused New Yorkers suddenly congregated
outside the Pearly Gates. They were
accountants and auditors, actuaries and administrators. In their ranks were fire fighters and file
clerks; maintenance men and police men.
It was not a motley crew by any stretch of the imagination. Not at all.
Actually, it was a broad and wide mob of folks from the New York City
Metropolitan Area who worked in our famed Twin Towers, the World Trade Center;
those giant elevens that anchored Lower Manhattan for many years. Those that perished there that day were
swiftly ushered into heaven; a better place, a place of much needed
respite. Most likely there was one hell
of a party up there that night given all the new residents had lived through to
get there.
For many, that was the sum
total of the day. For those not related
or connected directly to those who had died that day, it was a one-time massive
tragedy of epic proportions. The sights,
sounds and smell of it still linger in the deepest recesses of those who
survived the twin collapses or spent time on the rescue efforts that consumed
all involved for as long as it took to come to terms with the fact that there
would be no “rescue”; it would all be about the recovery of dead bodies. Even all these years later surviving spouses
and children awake in the middle of the night feeling the unscratchable itch of
a phantom limb; the painful sensation of a husband, wife, mom or dad, brother
or sister, coworker, colleague or friend, who was killed in that horrific
murderous, evil act. Many of those who perpetrated that wickedly successful
atrocity soon found out that Allah didn’t have 72 virgins waiting for them in
whatever afterlife vermin such as them wind up in.
Cruelly, although the first blood
in our battle against Muslim extremists was spilled on our soil, and the death
toll of that day was too awful for many to comprehend at the time and to this
day, the death toll here continues to rise.
Month by month, week by week, like the slow but achingly steady drip of
a leaking faucet death continues to visit here and takes another fine and
decent soul with him as he exits.
Death was fickle and arbitrary
on September 11, 2001. Circumstance,
happenstance and perhaps fate, or an alignment of the celestial bodies
determined who survived in the Towers, who managed to escape the surreal madness
of that morning and those whose lot was decidedly different. The stories are legion, they tell a variety
of tales; some almost obscenely quirky, others profoundly moving. The religious would say it was all God’s will
and those not possessed of that degree of faith quietly tell them to fuck off
or ignore them completely. For some the
balancing act between wrenching grief, raging anger, self-doubt, and reality
has consumed far too much of their emotional energy over the past 13
years. 13 years. That is a long time but that day still burns
and blisters the waking and sleeping hours of very many who felt the earth move
literally beneath their feet as roiling clouds of the pulverized contents of
220 acres of office space, a million pounds of structural steel, untold metric
yards of reinforced concrete, glass, asbestos, wiring, carpet and all the
constituent elements of our Towers fell into their own footprints as the world
stood witness. As that raging cloud was
shunted violently through the narrow canyons of Lower Manhattan maliciously obscuring
the brilliant early autumn sun, every witness tried to gauge the death
toll. But, it was beyond calculation at
that point, every New Yorker knew that upwards of 40,000 worked in those Towers
daily and there was an enormous subterranean concourse seven stories deep, housing shops of all kinds,
eateries and, of course the subways.
By a twist of luck Tuesday September
11, 2001 was an election day in New York City and most New Yorkers tend to vote
early before they go to work. That was
indeed fortunate. Had it been a regular
Tuesday the death toll would have been exponentially higher. Certainly each life lost was precious and the
repercussions of those losses ripple through the Metropolitan Area to this
day. Death visited New York on that day
not like a silent reaper in the night but as a malevolent purposeful force from
out of clear powder blue cloudless skies.
But, death still stalks victims; men and women who spent time in the
massive eight months long efforts to clear the 16 acres debris field in search of
human remains and any items that would provide proof positive of an identity of
one of the unaccounted for victims. It
was as solemn a task as it was, at times, grisly.
Remarkably, on Friday May 31,
2002 the last remaining segment of structural steel draped with an American
flag made its way up the ramp from the bottom of The Pit on a flatbed trailer
as Members of the FDNY, NYPD, PAPD and other stood ramrod straight. The removal of that final piece of one of the
Towers was a milestone; it represented the conclusion of what had been a
Herculean effort to clear the Site. During
the preceding months as the debris was removed and hauled off to barges that
transported much of it to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island where it
was again sifted through with fine tooth combs, hundreds toiled amid the long
smoldering wreckage. Underground fires
as well as pockets of flame amid the ground level debris smoldered for months
emanating toxins and carcinogens that would eventually make the death too from
9-11-01 an ever increasing number.
FIRST OMINOUS SIGNS OF TROUBLE
220 ACRES OF
OFFICE SPACE, CONCRETE, STRUCTURAL STEEL
CARPET,
CEILING TILES, OFFICE FURNITURE ALL PULVERIZED
INTO A MALICIOUS MALIGNANCY CARRYING
ROILING
CLOUD
It was not long after that
final structural element was gone that the first real troubling signs
emerged. Men and women who had labored
on The Pile (Ground Zero seems to be somehow disrespectful) and had no prior
history of the symptoms they were presenting with were suddenly experiencing
health problems. At first, most of the
effected were not alarmed by the new cough or sluggishness they were now
dealing with. Others did make the
connection that their time spent on The Pile was likely the cause of the weight
loss, tightness in the chest, lack of appetite and respiratory
difficulties. The FDNY who had lost 343
members on 9-11-01 was beginning to notice the uptick in sick calls and
increasing complaints from MOS about their health.
They were not alone.
Steelworkers, Union Tradesmen, Police Officers and others were also
beginning to feel that their health was not quite right.
At this point the City was
disregarding the notion that these people were getting sick because they had
worked on The Pile. Actually, the EPA
and the City continued to deny any correlation for many more months. Eventually, they had no choice as more and
more of the effected began to clinically present with odd carcinomas, almost “exotic”
malignancies that were most definitely “out of the ordinary” in some
cases. (The saga of how this situation
was handled, the liability, financial responsibility and the City’s negligence
and reluctance to admit what was causing these illnesses is an entirely
tragically and shameful story for another time).
As the number of the suddenly
stricken continued to mount, physicians in the NYC Metropolitan Area began to
believe that the cases they were seeing were not “outliers”; that there was
indeed a correlation between the diseases they were seeing and their patient
population. There was a significant
spike in seeing patients who worked for FDNY, NYPD, PAPD, Department of
Sanitation personnel as well as Ironworkers, dump and tow truck drivers,
operating engineers and others with some connection to 9-11-01 and the
Site. Multiple Myeloma, liver, stomach,
and colon adenocarcinomas with a troubling assortment of primary lung
malignancies, pulmonary fibrosis, sarcomas, lymphomas and leukemia were being positively diagnosed and
it was becoming clear, at least to the majority of the medical professionals
involved in treating these patients, that there was one common denominator
linking them all; they had all been present at The World Trade Center Plaza on
9-11-01, spent time on the rescue and recovery efforts in the days following
the twin collapses or they had labored over a protracted period of time at The
Pile or at the screening/sifting site at Fresh Kills.
A
DARKNESS DESCENDS
As 2002 gave way to 2003 it
was not long before the first of these patients succumbed to their
illness. The realization that many of
the sick were dealing with terminal disease was a huge body blow that sent
entire families reeling. As the patient
list grew so did the number of doctors and hospitals specifically designated
for the care and treatment of this very narrow list of patients. The list of “officially recognized post 9-11
diseases” now stands at 58. Within the
tightly knit circles of the FDNY and NYPD, Brothers were watching Brothers
die. A well circumscribed segment of the
population was contending with this new, stark reality as a group as well as
individual families. The toll post 9-11
disease was extracting to a still mourning FDNY was perhaps the cruelest. The FDNY, more than any other City Service,
is and has always been a “family affair”.
Sons follow Dads, cousins follow cousins into the ranks and it was not
unusual at all for some extended families to have lost several members on that
fateful day and by a disproportional rate, more MOS of the FDNY were falling
ill, some very seriously. Other Agencies
including the NYPD and PAPD that did not suffer the same death rate as the FDNY
did on September 11 were also seeing colleagues develop maladies directly
related to their exposure working The Pile over the almost nine months it took
to clear that 16 acre site.
For those who weren’t sick,
the specter of impending illness was a daunting psychological battle. There were also other psychological battles,
some more difficult to ascertain, with others becoming more and more
obvious. Many other MOS from FDNY, NYPD
and PAPD were wracked by the haunting imagery and “survivor’s guilt”. Others had fallen into the depths of profound
depression and there were unusually high incidences of heavy drinking and
suicide in FDNY and NYPD. September 11,
2001 killed and is still killing in a host of awful ways to this very day.
A QUESTION
Somebody asked the other day, “How
does a person allow one single day to define the rest of one’s life?” The only valid answer is, “How could it not?” That date serves as such a distinct partition
between what was and what is and the memories of that experience
for survivors and recovery workers alike are forever etched on the deepest part
of their souls. Some memories never
fade, they are never relegated to a dark recess of the mind nor should they
be. There seems to be for many an
obligation to keep those memories fresh, not necessarily for sharing with
others, but merely to preserve the honor, courage and sacrifice that were so
much in evidence on that day.
BURIALS AND BLESSINGS, CHURCHES AND CEMETERIES
Given the population density
of the NYC Metropolitan Area and the approximately 16 million people who live
here, there is no shortage of houses of worship for every creed, denomination
and sect. Cemetery space is just about
impossible to secure anymore; cremation has become, as a necessity, the only
viable alternative for those who die without a plot or a place in a family
plot. But the houses of worship are
plentiful, and the turn out for a funeral Service is large especially when a long time congregant passes. When MOS pass away they are sent off with
full honors befitting the Service and Sacrifice that was such an integral facet
of their life. The days and weeks
immediately after 9-11-01 saw a steady stream of funeral Services in churches, synagogues
and other sacred halls from Nassau County to Nyack, from Far Rockaway to Farmingdale,
from Park Slope to Morningside Heights. At
times it all seemed too much to bear; there is only so much grief a person can
live with before they begin to drown in its cold, dark waters.
But each death can be a
celebration; a choice can be made particularly when an MOS passes. By their very nature men and women compelled
to work as a Civil Servant, as a Fire Fighter, EMT, or Police Officer, are
people who are always prepared to give their life for another. That is a potent and noble pact they make
when they don the uniform of whichever Agency they are about to embark on a
career with.
LIFE GOES ON
For us the living, obviously,
life has gone on. It has unfolded in a
form and fashion that had never been dreamt about, considered or imagined. Families have gone on, children have grown
up, college degrees have been awarded and countless other of life’s many
milestones have been reached by those who lost a mom or dad, a brother or
sister or someone else they were particularly close to in the time before
September 11, 2001.
For far too many others their
lives have become struggles against the ravages of diseases the likes of which
they too could never have imagined. So
many live as they undergo rigorous chemotherapy and radiation treatment;
dialysis and respiratory therapy. Some
take upwards of 30 prescription medications a day. Once hale and hardy, full of life, strength
and humor are now almost hollowed out husks keeping a private vigil with Death
that sits in the dark corner of their room at night just waiting. Death is patient and sometimes that patience
is maddening.
DEDICATION
This was written and dedicated to all of those who were lost on
September 11, 2001 and all who have died since of 9-11-01 related
illnesses. They will forever be
remembered, respected and honored for their Service and Sacrifice.
May they all Rest in Peace in the presence of their God now that
they are Safely Home.
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