The posts I write for September 11 are always the hardest ones of the entire year. How many of my memories of that day do I put into type? How much do I leave out? How much of the bitterness that I still have about that time do I vent? Can I even begin to explain what it was like to live through that day and the days afterward in New York City, or would I offend you all by saying that although it was a tragedy for the nation, I don’t think you can fully understand what it was like for us unless you were here? Generally I choose not to do that, to focus instead on what it’s like to be a New Yorker on the anniversary of 9/11. Today, I’m going to attempt a little of both, unapologetically.
On September 11, 2001, the sky was the same crystal blue it is today. My roommate and I had left all the windows in the apartment open that morning to let the gorgeous weather in – it had poured the night before and the place was stuffy, and we were trying to air it out. I got into work somewhere between 8:46 and 9:03, after the first plane had hit, because people in my office already had the television in the breakroom on. In that seemingly endless seventeen minutes, we thought that it was a horrible mistake, like the plane that hit the Empire State Building in the 1930s. When the second plane hit, I knew. I remember saying “It’s terrorists.” But even then, we had no clue how bad it could get. Terrorists had bombed the World Trade Center before and life went on. We would be okay this time as well.
My mother called my office at this point to make sure I was okay. Phone lines in and out were sketchy, and a half hour later when another plane hit the Pentagon and I wanted to ask if she had heard from my brother or my uncle, both of whom were working in DC, I got nothing. Then the Towers collapsed and there was really nothing. She did get through briefly to tell me to stay in the office in case there was some chemical agent in the debris, but by that point I just wanted to be in my apartment – part of my home had collapsed in front of my disbelieving eyes, and I needed to be in the one place where I could still feel safe. My boss drove me in her car, and when we were nearly to my house, we were completely engulfed by a cloud of the debris which shut us off from the blue sky. I got to my apartment building, dashed to the door with my t-shirt covering my mouth and nose, and ran upstairs to slam all the windows shut. Even so, the smell was like nothing I have ever been through before or since: burning plastic, metal, concrete, paper, fuel, and worst of all, the smell of thousands of burning people.
The debris plume was over us seemingly forever, and as you can see from this image, the worst of it was over Brooklyn. I remember cleaning up the dust that had invaded our house before I could get home to close the windows, and I remember buying grapes from our corner fruit stand that were covered in the dust. We washed and washed them until the water ran clean, but I wonder how much of the dust still got into our systems? In the hours and days that followed, when charred business records and magazines and memos rained down on Brooklyn, and I wondered “Who touched this last? Did they make it out?” The weeks that followed, when we could still smell death in the air as the wind would shift back and forth.
There was more to it than these sense memories, of course, but five years later it’s those sense memories that are coming back to haunt the people of New York. I saw a documentary about the health problems caused by the cloud this weekend. 7 out of every 10 rescue workers who were at the WTC five years ago have health problems. On average, they have the lung capacity of someone twelve years older than them. And the effects of living in the path of the debris is starting to show on the general populace as well. People are reporting problems breathing, frequent coughing, stomach problems. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because I often complain of those things. In the Spring of 2002, I went to a doctor and told him I was having problems breathing deeply. I remember being able to draw a deep breath without feeling like something was sitting on my chest, but I can’t do it anymore. The doctor asked where I was during 9/11 and where I lived. When I told him Bensonhurst, he nodded and said “Yes, I’m starting to see a few of these cases. You’re developing asthma, and I’m pretty sure it’s 9/11 related because you lived right under the plume.”
Now, there was a 9/11 Registry for health problems, but they limited it to rescue workers and those who lived in lower Manhattan. Brooklyn was completely excluded, despite the picture you looked at earlier that showed that we got nailed. I’m screwed. My friend Thabiso, who now has severe heartburn most of the time (something which is also attributed to the debris), is also screwed. Countless others of us who were ignored because we didn’t live in Manhattan are all screwed. They still have no idea what was in that cloud, or how it was altered by UV radiation as it floated through that sunny sky, but the government doesn’t care. And if rescue workers who went to Ground Zero and heroically worked to find survivors and clear away debris without adequate protection can’t get compensation for their health issues, there’s no way in hell the rest of us will. Hey, we’re not rich, we can’t help Asshat in any way, forget about us.
This post is long, it’s rambling, at times it’s nigh incoherent, but I’m leaving it as is because it says what I want it to say, confused or not. Click here and read the top entry to read the 9/11 thoughts of one of my favorite DJ’s…she says what I want to say, too. There’s so much more I could say, but I think I’m going to stop here. Maybe next year, with another year between me and that day, I can talk more about what happened. Maybe next year.
 