9/11 CARE: Ground Zero's First Responders

White House: this stuff was safe to breathe (Common Dreams)

If America's Heroes are
Disposable
what does that make the rest of us?
When explosions rocked five of the seven World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001 (flattening three of them), thousands of volunteer relief workers converged on Ground Zero.
What they couldn't have known is costing them their lives.

History of the First Responders

Every time a large building collapses from a landslide, earthquake or flood, there are those fortunate few that by happenstance find themselves unharmed but trapped in an isolated pocket in the rubble, protected from the debris by a large structural member that has remained intact.

After the Attack on America on 9/11, some 40,000 volunteer rescue workers, driven by humanitarian concerns, patriotic enthusiasm and the perceived opportunity to manifest their expertise, skills and training into practice, converged on Manhattan to find these survivors and extricate them before they succumbed to dehydration.

In part because of White House efforts to keep Wall Street open for financial trading, they were told that the buildings had passively collapsed, not been obliterated by state-of-the-art military explosives, and that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe. "EPA is greatly relieved to have learned that there appears to be no significant levels of asbestos dust in the air in New York City," EPA chief Christie Whitman said Sept. 13, 2001, in a report cleared through Condoleeza Rice, then head of the National Security Council.

Photo: SoHo Blues

So they could not have known then that those survivors who had not been blown into slivers would have been broiled alive by the hellish sub-surface temperatures. Survivorship at Ground Zero was essentially that: zero.

They also could not have known that the floor pans and insulation of these towering edifaces were reduced by those same explosions and supernatural temperatures into a fine aerosol of concrete and asbestos powder that would remain in their bodies to their last, considerably sooner, dying day.

How much asbestos was released into the air that day? WTC construction was begun before the use of asbestos was banned. Even though the upper floors used a different fire retardant, approximately 400 tons of asbestos fiber were in the buildings on 9/11. In addition to the responders, a further 50,000 residents of lower Manhattan, along with 400,000 people working within two kilometers of the site, were also unprotected from billowing toxins rising from the rubble.

On October 26, 2001, New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez detailed EPA test findings of notable quantities of dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead and chromium as well. EPA officials held a joint press conference with NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani to dismiss his story. NYC Commissioner of Environmental Protection Joel Miele said "for residents and people who are working in the open area that as been created downtown, there is no realistic danger to health."

As New Yorkers began to fume over reports that authorities downplayed the danger of Ground Zero dust, the White House gave EPA chief Christie Whitman the power to bury embarrassing documents by classifying them secret. "I hereby designate the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to classify information originally as 'Secret,'" states the executive order, which was signed by President Bush on May 6, 2002.

In September, 2006, Hillary Clinton proposed an amendment to a measure funding port security so that $5,800 a year for five years could be provided to each person sickened from Ground Zero exposure. Senate Republicans blocked the measure without letting it come up for a vote, stating her measure was "not germane."

Health Problems

seven out of 10 first responders and workers who toiled at Ground Zero suffer from chronic lung ailments

As of June, 2006, 283 World Trade Center rescue and recovery workers had been diagnosed with cancer, and 33 of them had died of cancer. David Worby is a lawyer for 8,000 WTC responders sufferning from disorders including leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's myeloma, and other tumors of the tongue, throat, testicles, breast, bladder, kidney, colon, intestines, and lung. "The odds of that occurring are one in hundreds of millions," he says.

Roster - Meet first responders and learn about their lives		Return to Top
NY Governor George Pataki with William Rodriguez	Anna, the survivor-sniffing dog (deceased Aug 6, 2006) Cesar Borja, Ground Zero cop John Feal, Marvin Bethea, Jonathan Sferazo and Mike McCormack Jack Ginty: "They flat-out lied to us" Faiz Khan: CHOICES - Living Consciously Sister Cindy Mahoney: lawyers fighting to prove 9/11 link (Deceased Nov 1, 2006) Kevin McPadden: "This was chemicals, this was explosives." David Miller: How a first responder found the 9/11 Truth movement Debbie Reeve, paramedic, died March 24, 2006 at age 41 William Rodriguez is expected to reach an audience of 300 million with his links to the Hispanic community Robert Ryan - former triathelete John Walcott - battling leukemia Craig