World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

That second day, with so many people still unaccounted for in New York, it is imderstandable that people would risk their own health to save lives. All kinds of numbers would be thrown around to try to assess the numbers lost. Whatever the ultimate death toll, it will be "more than any of us can bear," said New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, hours after the horrific attacks~a quote often repeated to show the mayor’s leadership in an atmosphere of confusion, fear and anguish. His leadership was widely touted, and Queen Elizabeth of England even acknowledged his behavior by knighting him. (4)

Although the mayor remained a figure of calm in the midst of the city’s crisis, steadfastly assuring the public that emergency workers were doing their jobs to manage the scene properly, some argued that his calming words hid some potent dangers.

-4 Two years later, Forras remembers the Mayor J* standing next to then-EPA administrator Christie Whitman, saying the air’s safe. “When you have someone of the caliber of Mayor Giuliani saying it, they took that as gospel,” says Forras. “For me, it’s very scary. We lost another firefighter, and that makes one in New York and two volunteers who have died of pneumonia. My lungs are totally shot, and I’m afraid that’s what many of us are going to die of” Photo: Paul Olivier

The rescue effort The first priority for local responders was to rescue as many victims as possible. For the moment, the rubble at the World Trade Center was hardly regarded as too toxic to touch or breathe, since the pulverized ground and layers of charred debris could still yield more lives.

Time was of the essence. They knew that within the first few minutes, hours and days they had the best chance of recovering human beings and getting them medical help right away. In the hours that followed the morning’s catastrophe, responders were miraculously able to pull several people out of the rubble of the building—but only a half dozen.

The greater miracle was how that so many thousands were evacuated safely from the second largest building in the world, which hours earlier had housed 100,000 workers and visitors each day.

No survivors were discovered in the wreckage after the morning of September 12‘\ as health officials were sad to realize, and thousands of lives lost.

Within several days, the mission of those at the site changed from rescuing survivors to caring for the rescuers and helping to insure their safety, noted Dr. Kenneth Miller, one of the medical experts with the Urban Search and Rescue teams, who traveled from Orange County, Calif, to serve as part of the disaster team.

"The void spaces in the buildings were few and the injuries sustained by the victims were dramatic," Dr. Miller recalled, in an article for the Health Care Agency of Orange County. "Our

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