The rage I feel began on that morning 5 years ago. I lived only 5 blocks from the WTC on Sept 11. I was caught in the middle of the attacks, taking my young son to his 4th day of second grade only three blocks above the Towers. We never went home again after that day because on that beautiful morning, I had left a window open. When I was finally escorted back into my apartment - by a military escort with machine guns (never thought that would happen to me here), after being searched and prodded, my apartment looked like Pompeii, with thick dust shrouding my every possession.
The day after the attack, I called a help line and asked what the residents of the area were supposed to do. I was told to go to a homeless shelter with crackheads and derelicts. There was nothing else set up for us. In fact, we were pretty much forgotten in the rush to comb the rubble pile. And I do completely understand that. We were not registering in the hierarchy of chaos that had ensued. In fact, there was nothing organized for the residents and because it's an affluent area, most of us had fled to other's apartments or left town. We had the means to take care of ourselves.
About four days after the attack, a small gathering was organized by the camp director at the downtown childrens' day camp. Not the police, a service agency, or any government branch - a camp director. He had a bullhorn and was shouting out phone numbers and web addresses for different agencies that could answer our questions. The next day, someone from one of our representative's office showed up with nice four color printed sheets with emergency phone numbers. A little too little too late. And none of that mattered since we couldn't get into our apartments, had no phones or computers. Not only did the government not protect us on the morning that airplanes careened into the towers, they weren't doing much to help us at that point either. (Where was the military that morning anyway? But that's another story...)
I consulted the web site for the EPA after hearing that the air was safe to breathe ten days later. I didn't believe it for a minute. Anyone with logic knew that whatever was down there was dangerous and possibly deadly. But the web site linked us to information about how to clean up the mess. We should use wet rags and roll up our pant legs. Oh, and don't forget to throw out any food that may have been contaminated like boxes of cereal! Don't take a chance on that! I didn't buy into it, but I had to move quickly to get on with my life.
Long story short - I knew that I couldn't live with my young son in a pit of toxic chemicals. As soon as I could get into my apartment to rescue our stranded cat I surveyed the damage and saw that after 6 days, all of my orchids had died - the canary in the coal mine. They didn't die from lack of water or the dust - it had to be gasses in the air. Over the next four weeks, I threw away everything in my apartment that was soft, that could have absorbed the dust, all the while dutifully wearing the thin paper mask that was given to me. I packed the rest of my possessions and moved uptown, coughing up blood, picking glass slivers out of my skin, and not able to keep food in. I did it alone, all the while trying to shield my young son from the horror that we were living.
FEMA did nothing other than offer me a low interest loan to get me back on my feet. Gee thanks. The State of NY graciously paid to cover my moving costs. My insurance company fought me about replacing items - told me to have my mattresses and bedding CLEANED! I was given sixty days to replace everything in my life, all the while suffering from PTSD. But that's all another story too. I went to get help from various agencies, but I had insurance so wasn't eligible for many of the programs. Whatever - I powered through on my own.
The coughing didn't stop. Skin rashes showed up, eye irritations, sore throats. I spent as little time as I could in the hell hole that had been my home, grieving my innocence gone, the loss of my neighborhood. I attended all the meetings at school, fighting to keep our young children from being sent back to the school at Ground Zero, knowing in my heart that their young bodies should never be allowed to be exposed to the swirling dust clouds in the neighborhood. But we lost, and in early February, our children were forced back into that school, without even a haz mat clean up of the site. How shameful! When Laura Bush showed up at my son's temporary school two weeks after the attacks for a photo op with these traumatized children, she told us that she couldn't make any promises to help us. Thanks, guys. The parents cleaned and painted the school which had been used as a triage center for the rescue workers. The PTA, not the school system, or god forbid federal government, installed a filtration system to protect our children. How much toxic junk was carried into that building over the course of those months?
And now - five years later, I have been diagnosed and am being treated for lymphoma - a blood cancer caused by exposure to toxic chemicals. Can we connect the dots here? Do you think that maybe all of the poisonous gasses from benzene to PCBs that I breathed had anything to do with this? Asbestos, pulverized concrete, glass shards? Luckily this time I am receiving help - a great insurance policy is covering these costs. But others aren't so lucky. And luckily I have a cancer that is treatable. Others are not so lucky, with many pulmonary diseases, liver cancers, etc.
There are now an estimated TWELVE Thousand people (12,000) critically sick from the toxins at Ground Zero. Rescue workers, volunteers, residents, people who worked in the area. But no one is monitoring us that I know of. Help is not forthcoming to many of the uninsured and they are not receiving the kind of care that they need. Obviously the fire fighters and police have their unions etc monitoring them, but what about the rest of us? The World Trade Center Health Registry barely responded to me when I asked if they were seeing a pattern of cancer from victims. (No, they weren't). In fact, after five years, they have not surveyed us to monitor our health status (although there is supposedly another questionnaire coming). This is insanity!
Of all the lists of impeachable offenses that I have read on this site, this issue has been mentioned only a few times. But look at the enormity of it. The White House edited the memo by the EPA on air quality in the days after 911 and put hundreds of thousands of people's health at risk. Five years out there are 12,000 of us, maybe more - who knows? And we are starting to die. This number will grow to become another cancer on the face of this administration. But only if people know about us and talk about us.
Rage on with me. Demand accountability from this wretched bunch of sociopaths that have stolen our country. Remember this heinous crime in your reasons for impeachment. Their lies are costing us our lives.
Feel the rage.
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