Dan Rather
NEW YORK CITY:
ON SEPTEMBER 18, 2001, the remains of the World Trade Center were a jagged, burning, smoking pile of rubble. Thousands of emergency workers and volunteers pored over the debris, in a search that had abandoned hopes of rescue and turned instead to the grim task of recovery. The day before, Wall Street had reopened for its first day of trading after the attacks, with workers returning to offices in the financial district surrounding the pile. On that Tuesday, a week after the collapse of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center, Christine Whitman, then director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), told New York and the nation that, in lower Manhattan, the "air is safe to breathe."
It was an assurance that was repeated by various government officials in the days and weeks after 9/11. But two years later, the EPA's Office of Inspector General issued a report stating "When EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement." And early last month, Judge Deborah A. Batts of U.S. District Court in Manhattan issued a ruling in a class-action suit brought against the EPA and past and present officials of that agency by residents and schoolchildren from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. In her ruling, Judge Batts said, "The allegations in this case of Whitman's reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking." Whitman rejected the ruling as "completely inaccurate."
This year we will mark five years since the towers came down. Though we are confronted every day with ample evidence that we are living in the post-September 11 world, the day itself has become shrouded in myth and shared sentiment. This is true not only for Americans who live outside New York; it is also the case for many who saw the towers burn and fall with their own eyes. Some things are too big to be fully contained by memory.
HEALTH CONSEQUENCES
But even as the memories become hazy, one thing has become increasingly clear: September 11, 2001 has had lasting health consequences, especially for those who toiled for long weeks and months atop the smouldering pile of debris. Some who worked the pile have died from respiratory ailments. Others, many others, have lost their ability to make a living as their health has gone into precipitous decline. Dr. Kerry Kelly, chief medical officer for the New York City Fire Department, has given repeated testimony about the alarming decline in lung function in significant percentages of Ground Zero veterans. As many as a quarter still suffer from severe respiratory ailments.
Last week, the federal government, through the Department of Health and Human Services, named a coordinator for its efforts to deal with the ongoing and potentially far-ranging health impacts of Ground Zero. John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, is charged with formulating and executing a plan to treat, screen and track those who continue to feel the effects of 9/11.
There's a bumper sticker you still see a lot in New York, on fire trucks and construction workers' pickups and everyday automobiles: All Gave Some, Some Gave All. Nearly five years on, some are still giving, and 9/11 is still taking its toll. In the devastating aftermath of that terrible day, we drew strength from the images and words of those who kept giving blood, sweat and tears at Ground Zero. The federal government has taken a step to help those who suffer still. And it is up to each and every one of us to make sure that they are not forgotten.
Dan Rather is a U.S.
television broadcaster.
