When helpers fall ill years later – the consequences of 9/11

Toxic dust

When helpers fall ill years later – the consequences of 9/11

After the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, many people rushed to Ground Zero to help. 25 years later, tens of thousands are suffering from the consequences of toxic dust. And there are more and more.

Curt Andrews has had to have skin cancer removed eight times. On the face, head and chest. These are the parts of his body that were exposed to the dust caused by the attacks on the World Trade Center towers 25 years ago. The volunteer firefighter from the US state of Connecticut spent a week in the disaster zone that went down in history as Ground Zero. What hardly anyone realized at the time was that the helpers absorbed a highly toxic cocktail of powdered concrete, glass, plasterboard, burnt plastics and other pollutants through the air and skin.

“We all knew that thousands and thousands of people were working there. So I said to myself: I have to go there to help,” says Andrews, who quickly got into the car with a bag packed for two weeks and other firefighters to drive an hour and a half away new York to drive.

The towers have already collapsed when he arrives. He wades through a kind of ash that reaches up to his knees. “It was like walking through snow,” he says. The streets around the World Trade Center are full of rubble.

Andrews expects to rescue people from the rubble and cries for help among the collapsed towers. But the only thing he hears are beepers. Before the collapse, firefighters from the entire city were called to the World Trade Center. More than 300 firefighters die when the towers collapse. The devices beep if they are not moved for a long time. A distress signal. At some point the batteries will run out.

“At 11 a.m., just before midnight, we found someone – a man who was still alive. A steel beam had pierced his arm. We had doctors come to him and give him morphine. We then had to amputate his arm and remove him from the pile of rubble. He survived,” says Andrews. It is said to be the only survivor that he finds within a week. As he remembers, he and his colleagues do not wear protective masks. “We were there to help others. We didn’t worry about ourselves.”

His eyes were irritated and he was coughing a lot. The then 41-year-old spent his first night on a curb. “We didn’t get a chance to shower the whole time we were down there. So we were completely covered in this dust.”