World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Part 1. A Day of Disaster

I t was America's longest day. Beginning at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, the world stood aghast as jets, transformed into missiles, leveled the highest towers in the nation’s capital of finance, one after another, then as another jet an hour later sliced into the Pentagon. In the flames and collapse of steel and concrete, the terrorist attacks left thousands dead, urban landscapes physically devastated, and the country as a whole in a state of psychological shock. People were to witness an unfolding environmental health disaster.

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Photo: EPA

In the wake of the tragedy, people everywhere marveled at the bravery of those who rushed in to the wreckage to rescue survivors at the disaster sites. Who can ever forget the firefighters, police officers, and volunteers of all kinds who converged on New York and Washington to lend a hand or whatever help they could?

From the beginning, too, experts in environmental health and public health were operating behind the scenes, having been called upon to try to size up the dimensions of the unprecedented disaster and act decisively to protect rescue workers and the general public. Although their actions captured no headlines or documentary photos that day, some of these people also risked their lives that day.

Minutes after the first hijacked plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, New York City Police Captain Terrence Revella, a commander with the New York State Department of

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