World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

of Colorado. “This raised the level of urgency and seriousness to a much higher level than in many natural disasters.” (9)

So environmental and health officials and technicians had trouble getting clearance to get onto the site, say experts like Alison Geyh and Bruce Lippy. “The authority for Ground Zero changed ten times during the first few weeks before it became the purview of the Department of Design and Construction,” says Geyh.

“It was such a scramble early on, we just said ‘whoa,’ take a deep breath,”’ says Lippy, who adds that the sheer effort of getting badged and approved was a challenge. “It was impossibly large, with 23 different entrances onto the site. There was the OEM orange badge, then getting through the FEMA dociunentation.”

Since authority for the site rested with imiformed services, the Fire Department as incident commander, and police as enforcers of crowd control and evidence collection, it was hard for people doing environmental health enforcement to do their jobs effectively.

Environmental health officials like McKinney say they faced difficulties enforcing health rules with fire department personnel. McKinney says he would flash his Health Department badge to warn them of the need to make sure that food being handled safely, or the need for garbage to be properly disposed of. Among the health problems were the presence of dust and waste everywhere, the greater potential for rats, he says.

Environmental health may have been overlooked in the early months because the media, by and large, focused on other, “bigger” themes related to terrorism, everything from the cultural and geopolitical issues surrounding the attacks—Islam and the Middle East—the immediate economic dislocation... “But reactions varied from ‘okay’ to real anger,” says McKiimey. “Cops are cops—they’re not used to that [being told what to do].”

Another main reason why environmental health may have been overlooked in the early months was that the media, by and large, focused on other, “bigger” themes related to terrorism, everything from the cultural and geopolitical issues surrounding the attacks—Islam and the Middle East—the immediate economic dislocation; the search and rescue operations; the process of criminal investigations and the suspects. In a paper on the patterns of media coverage of the terrorist attacks, Christine Rodrigue, (1) a geographer at California State University, identifies ten main themes—and environment is not one of them.

That’s surprising considering, at least on the local level, the physical environment around the World Trade Center had changed drastically—from giant piles of rubble strewn everywhere to trucks hauling debris to smoke and soot to empty buildings and displaced residents to the fact that it was difficult to breathe.

“For more than a year a profoimd split troubled New York journalists on how to cover and play this unfamiliar new threat,” according to a memo from the Society of Enviroiunental Journalists

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