Status: 06.09.2021 12:38 p.m.
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With the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, the death did not end. Even after the terrorist attacks in New York, many aid workers lost their lives – because of toxic fumes at Ground Zero. Others still suffer today.
By Peter Mücke, ARD-Studio New York
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The planes speeding into the Word Trade Center, the collapsing towers, the appearances of politicians among the rubble – these images went around the world. But what happened in the hours and days after that at Ground Zero was only seen by the helpers who were there. John Feal was one of them. Over the past 20 years he has trained himself to suppress what he has seen, he reports – because “nobody is prepared to wake up one morning and see something like this”.
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Chaos, destruction, body parts among the rubble, disturbed people looking for relatives. Many of the 100,000 or so helpers are still suffering from what they have seen. And under what they breathed in, says medic Michael Crane. The search parties and rescue workers “went into the rubble with practically no protective equipment. Every time they lifted something, there was fire underneath. Clouds with highly toxic fumes literally hit them in the face.”
Anyone who went to Ground Zero after the 9/11/2001 attacks to help ran the risk of inhaling toxic fumes – many only realized this much later.
Image: AFP
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Nobody knows the mix
Asbestos, glass fibers, dioxins, lead, sulfuric acid – nobody knows the exact mixture of the one million tons of rubble and dust in the air and on the streets of Manhattan, but the consequences are. Cough, shortness of breath, chest pain were the beginning. There were also serious mental illnesses. In the meantime, 68 different types of cancer have been traced back to the “9/11” poisons. Crane speaks of a “burning cocktail of various poisons”. The dangerous thing about it is that even many years later, diseases could break out as a result.
Crane is the associate director of the Word Trade Center Program. Around 80,000 people who worked at Ground Zero in the days and weeks after the attacks are given medical care and closely examined. They are exclusively chronically ill, says Crane – “these people will have symptoms for the rest of their lives.” Many could at least be treated under the program, including some cancer patients. But of course a lot of people would also die, and that was tragic.
Also a government failure?
According to estimates, almost as many people have now died from the long-term effects as from the attacks themselves. He alone has already attended 187 funerals, says John Feal, who himself narrowly escaped death. As a helper at Ground Zero, he was seriously injured by falling debris. Most people believed he found that innocent people were only killed by the terrorists. “But thousands more died because our government failed.”
He himself had to struggle for a long time to even be recognized as a victim. Then he set up a foundation for affected first aiders and put pressure in Washington so that the 9/11 Relief Fund would continue to receive money. It’s a fight that was also joined by Jon Stewart, the ex-host of the Daily Show. His outburst of anger in 2019 before the US Congress is legendary:
You ignore people. Your indifference robs them of the most precious thing they still have: time. They did their job with courage, dignity and humility. And now do your job!
The money continues to flow
The MPs did. The compensation fund and the medical program are now financially secured until 2092.
And that, says its deputy director Crane, is urgently needed, there is the security of being able to continue to accompany the people. Because the suffering continues 20 years after September 11, 2001. And: “There will never be a point where you can say: Now nobody will get sick anymore, now nothing will happen anymore.”
9/11 20 years after 9/11 – The dying goes on
Peter Mücke, ARD New York, August 28, 2021 10:16 am
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