City of Dust

by Anthony DePalma

  And although Marty certainly is glad to be alive, delighted with the prospect of watching Emma and her sisters grow, he has asked his doctors the same question about chance and science. “Ten thousand people could be exposed to the same thing in the environment, but for some reason, my genetic makeup allows that switch to be thrown and my body can’t fight this condition,” Marty said. “That’s all there is to that. That kind of answered it for me, why I got it and not somebody else.”

  In all, more than 60,000 people may have responded to the disaster at ground zero, among them many from outside New York City who came to help. They included alpine climbers who could venture far deeper into the debris looking for survivors than Marty or Dave Fullam ever could go, Red Cross disaster response specialists, and search-and-rescue teams such as Sarah Atlas and her specially trained German Shepherd, Anna.

  Atlas is part of the 135 volunteers with New Jersey Task Force One, a search-and-rescue outfit that works in coordination with the state’s Office of Emergency Management and the New Jersey State Police. They train at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, the sprawling military base deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens that was the scene of the famous accident that destroyed the German airship Hindenburg in 1937. Atlas was a career emergency medical technician who did ambulance runs for Virtua, a multihospital health care system in southern New Jersey. Her real passion, though, has always been her dogs. She was one of the rescue team’s ten handlers who, with their 14 search-and-rescue dogs, were trained to respond to urban disasters. Like other members of the team, Atlas kept a travel bag packed and ready to go 24/7.

  When her beeper went off on the morning of September 11, she was still in the middle of a 4 a.m.-to-11 a.m. shift with the ambulance corps. She rushed to her home outside Camden, rousted Anna—a three-year-old German Shepherd, mostly black, with reddish-tan darts on her husky legs—threw her emergency bag into the truck, and headed for Lakehurst, about 90 minutes away. She mustered there with the other members of the rescue squad. Soon they were on the road, barreling up the New Jersey Turnpike. They made it to Manhattan just after the towers fell, when there was still hope that people had somehow survived the cataclysm and were trapped beneath the rubble where only the dogs could find them. Fires were still raging, the air so thick they had trouble seeing, and breathing was tortuous. Atlas and Anna had been to many disaster sites before. Atlas had seen the damage left by floodwaters and the paltry remains of houses leveled by gas explosions. But this dwarfed her imagination. She struggled to reconcile the scene with previous disasters, and for a few minutes she was overwhelmed. Then her training kicked in. The responders on the scene, mostly firemen, had started to buzz with a nervous excitement because, Atlas could hear them murmuring, “The dogs are here.” They knew that if anyone had survived the collapses, the dogs could find them.

  Rescue dogs go through years of training and act as though they are part Daniel Boone, part metal detector. Anna was known as a “live find” dog. She had been taught that once she sniffed out someone in distress, she must stay on guard, staring intensively at the spot where the survivor was trapped and barking constantly until her human partner checked it out. This was what Atlas and Anna hoped to do as they crawled over the debris pile for ten days. “We were all hoping for miracles,” she remembered.3 But for ten days, Anna never barked the intense bark that would have indicated she had found someone alive.

  The dogs scrambled over the busted concrete and the jagged steel, running up and down the valleys created by the debris. Anna crouched so low that her belly fur was scorched by pieces of melted PVC conduit. One rescue Border Collie had the fur on its paws singed by the heat.

  Atlas and Anna worked with very little sleep for the ten days. Atlas was so overcome by the thick smoke that she developed World Trade Center cough, and it has stayed with her, on and off. She and the other rescuers were sore and mentally fatigued, never more so than when they realized that the chances of finding anyone alive were fading. In the meantime, Atlas remembered hearing that the air was fine, so she didn’t panic when all she had for protection was a paper mask; Anna, of course, had nothing. When the rescue phase ended, Task Force One returned to a hero’s welcome in Lakehurst. Townspeople organized a ceremony for them and celebrated their courage. But what should have been a joyous homecoming was another difficult step for Atlas. “There was a big party with speeches, but when my father met me at the base, I broke down crying.” The days in New York had been packed with so much emotion, exertion, and exposure to the contaminated air that they had left her drained. When Atlas drove home after the ceremony, she was so agitated that she zipped right past her own house. A week later, she was hospitalized with intense sinusitis and pneumonia. She was out of work for two months.

  Anna came back from ground zero equally exhausted, even though she was used to hardship. When she was just a year old, she had been hit by a car. Atlas and her veterinarian had agreed that if Anna ever developed arthritis because of injuries from the accident, she would not be worked anymore. Atlas was as committed to her rescue work as she was to the welfare of her dogs. “They put their own health on the line to help others. How can you put a price on that?” she asked. Two months before 9/11, she had taken Anna to the vet for spinal x-rays and extensive blood work. Everything seemed to be all right; Anna was allowed to continue to work.

  But when Atlas was rushed to the hospital after returning from New York, her dog showed signs of weakness, too. By the time Atlas was discharged, Anna just wasn’t right. She acted like she was sore and exhibited signs of pain if anyone touched her, which was not like her at all. Atlas took her to a vet, who found lesions on her spine. Later Atlas enrolled her in a study of rescue dogs that was being done by Dr. Cynthia Otto, a veterinary specialist and associate professor of critical care at the University of Pennsylvania. Atlas sent over Anna’s x-rays and blood samples. Less than a year after 9/11, when Anna was just four, she became so sick that Atlas had to make an excruciating decision. Shepherds like Anna have an average life span of close to 13 years. But Anna was in such pain that Atlas reluctantly had her put down.

  In her study, Otto eventually examined nearly 100 search-and-rescue dogs that had worked at ground zero.4 She compared their medical records to those from a control group of rescue dogs that had not been exposed to the contaminants in the air of Lower Manhattan. After examining Anna, Otto determined that she had developed a fungal infection called aspergillosis that had quickly spread throughout her body, attacking every major organ. German Shepherds are predisposed to this infection, and Otto did not think it was linked to ground zero dust. Overall, Otto found no evidence of a correlation between the dust and the kinds of diseases that had troubled Anna and several other dogs.

  Mindful of the concerns about asbestos in the ground zero air, Otto and her colleagues had closely examined chest x-rays of the dogs in the study. With the dogs’ shorter life span, the two-to-three-decade latency periods for asbestosis and mesothelioma to develop in humans would have been expected to narrow to just a few years, making the dogs the canine equivalents of canaries in a coal mine. If dust caused cancer in the dogs at a higher than expected rate, there could be worrisome implications for humans. But the exams showed nothing unusual. Within four years of the attacks, 15 of the 97 dogs in the study (including Anna) had died. Eight of them had cancer. Otto found that the death rate and the number of dogs with cancer were not significantly different from what had occurred in the control group.

  While she respects the work Otto has done, Atlas questions the validity of the study, saying that the results are skewed because they excluded many of the rescue dogs that were brought to New York from other parts of the country. In her mind, it was clear that the dogs had been exposed to toxic air and hazardous surroundings, and that raised questions about her own health. Anna had not spent one minute on the pile without her, and if, as she believed, the dust and gasses had fatally harmed the dog, what had it done to her handler? Atlas had come back from groun
d zero in one piece, but her life was not the same. She experienced bouts of dizziness when her blood pressure fell precipitously, at times going as low as 40/20. She’d drop into a dead faint, scaring everyone around her until they could get her to a hospital.

  Within a year after 9/11, Atlas was suffering this kind of attack two or three times a month, and her doctors had no clue what was causing them. Then one day she used a commercial hand sanitizer and immediately afterward passed out and had to be rushed to the hospital emergency room. It appeared to be a severe allergic reaction. As the years passed, such attacks became more severe and occurred with greater frequency. She experienced one spell right after she took a Tylenol gel-cap. Another time she was driving with an open window and caught a whiff of something in the air. Finally, in 2007, after she had a severe attack while at work, she was forced to go for comprehensive testing. The doctors’ conclusion surprised her. They diagnosed idiopathic anaphylaxis, a potentially fatal condition in which blood pressure drops sharply and the person suffers shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing, and fainting. Other ground zero responders say they have developed severe sensitivity to a wide range of chemicals. But in most cases, doctors have no idea what causes it. Atlas was given an EpiPen to inject herself with a powerful counteracting drug in case she suffered an especially bad attack. She was put on a regimen of antihistamines—and Prozac, because doctors realized that stress was also setting off the attacks.

  Atlas was drawn into the cycle of separate but related symptoms that many ground zero responders have claimed. In the following months, she developed severe acid reflux. Later it was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and irritant-induced asthma. She signed up for monitoring at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, which runs a satellite World Trade Center screening and monitoring program. She was given medications to lessen the physical symptoms, but nothing relieved her anxiety about what had happened to Anna and what the future might hold for her.

  With the help of neighbors in southern New Jersey who raised the money for her, Atlas was able to replace Anna with Tango, a sable German Shepherd from the Netherlands that already had been trained as a live-find rescue dog. Atlas found that as she continued Tango’s training, she had to give him commands in Dutch. She recently added another dog, a thinner but more energetic version of Tango named Kaylee who came from the Slovak Republic. Atlas now works Kaylee as a cadaver dog that can climb a ladder, leap over rebar, and sniff out decomposing flesh. When Kaylee finds what she has been trained to look for, she sits erect with her back to the remains until Atlas comes to investigate.

  Atlas turned 54 in 2010 and continues to volunteer with New Jersey Task Force One. But in her regular job, she no longer goes on ambulance runs. Since the anaphylaxis was diagnosed, she has worked inside the Virtua hospital system, taking blood and administering EKG tests. She’s still, as she says, “for the animals.” Tango and Kaylee romp around her backyard, gnawing on big red balls they’ve torn open. Atlas also cares for a few birds, including a temperamental white cockatoo that isn’t crazy about strangers. On the étagère in her living room are a dozen statuettes of German Shepherds, along with Anna’s cremains, which she keeps in a handsome clay pot made by a local artist. “She was no different from any of the other dogs,” Atlas says, “but they are all special because of what they do.” She has started the Search and Rescue Dog Foundation to provide a little bit of help to the volunteers who pay for the entire cost of buying, raising, and training their rescue dogs.

  It bothers Atlas that some people don’t believe that Anna’s premature death, and the death of other dogs that worked at ground zero, was caused by the dust. She realizes that the doubts also extend to her own medical problems. People see her working and think she must be all right. “But my health records speak for themselves,” she said. She keeps them all in plastic binders, each a couple inches thick and growing. As more time passes, she realizes that attention has shifted from terrorism to the economy. Except for the 9/11 conspiracy theorists who call her on a regular basis to check out something they think she said about molten steel at ground zero (she didn’t say it), she said she finds few people willing to listen anymore to the difficulties that she and other responders have faced, just as she and other responders find that they have trouble moving on with their lives.

  At one time she had found people who believed her and were ready to help. She had gone to the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund in the last month before the fund stopped taking applications in December 2003. She won a comparatively small award, around $5,000, in 2004 that helped her recover from the months out of work because of her immediate respiratory problems. Now with the anaphylaxis and asthma and other chronic health issues permanently on her medical record, she, like Marty Fullam and thousands of others, decided to join the lawsuit against the city.

  “I don’t really expect anything to come of it, to be quite honest with you,” she said. Even though her settlement with the compensation fund prohibts her from suing, she agreed to join the case against the city after plaintiffs’ lawyers approached her. She said she did so because she was concerned about what might happen down the road, when who knows what else might suddenly pop up and prevent her from working with her dogs at disaster sites. She also had another reason to sue the city: She wanted to use the lengthy litigation to send a message. “I thought it was also important,” she said, “that people realize that so many of us are sick.”

  A few months before September 11, Kevin Rogers and the 117 men and women who worked with him at Con Edison’s Brooklyn-Queens Emergency Electric Operations Unit opened their hearts and their wallets to donate $10,000 to a local children’s hospital. Each of them gave away a portion of the $400 bonus they had received for achieving the remarkable standard of working as a unit for more than a million hours without an accident. Considering the kind of work they did—on call all day, every day, responding to power outages and other emergencies during the worst weather conditions—escaping injury for so long was quite an achievement. Rogers, who managed the troubleshooting unit, had more than 25 years of experience with Con Ed and was known for being careful, a trait he passed along to those he worked with.

  On the day of the biggest emergency he’d faced in that quarter-century of work, Rogers had made the trip up from his home in Toms River, N.J., to report to Con Ed’s emergency operations unit in Brooklyn as he normally did. After the first plane struck the North Tower, he had been dispatched to Lower Manhattan, where the crowded streets of the financial district formed the heart of the city’s electronic grid. Disruptions on or near Wall Street could be disastrous for all of New York City. Con Edison was worried about 7 World Trade Center and the giant substations beneath it. They represented a critical part of the city’s electrical system, and now they were threatened.

  Rogers led four crews into Lower Manhattan to assess the conditions at Number 7 World Trade Center. He arrived just as the first tower crumbled, and the wave of dust and debris swept over him. The heavy soot and airborne debris had just begun to settle, allowing in some sunlight, when the second tower gave way. Rogers again confronted the dark plume that had once been one of the world’s tallest buildings.

  As an on-site emergency manager for Con Edison, Rogers had to call on his decades of experience to figure how to stay ahead of the escalating calamity. As he assessed damage, he was constantly aware of the dangerous conditions all around him. He was one of the last people still inside 7 World later that day when authorities determined that it, too, was in danger of falling. He evacuated and then, for a third time that day, was covered by dust and ash when the building collapsed. He continued working through the afternoon and evening, and he stayed on the job without a break until September 14. Besides minding the electrical system, Rogers searched for a missing coworker who had been killed in the collapse of one of the towers. He took turns on the bucket brigade alongside firefighters and volunteers. As the immediate emergency was brought under control, he got some
sleep and cut back his hours to 18 a day. In the following weeks, Con Ed installed 36 miles of cables above ground to take the place of the ruined subterranean infrastructure that the debris had made inaccessible. Rogers worked without a day off through October 13. He was 58 at the time, and the physical and mental effort he put into the ground zero operation left him exhausted.

  Rogers continued to help coordinate Con Ed’s response at ground zero, but he told his wife, Kathleen, a registered nurse, that something wasn’t right. Although he said he had not had any pulmonary problems before 9/11, Rogers wasn’t the same after being exposed to those three tidal waves of dust. He developed trouble breathing, and like so many others on the pile, he started coughing and couldn’t stop, even when he was away from ground zero. He wasn’t able to work around the pile after November, and he reported to Con Ed’s medical office with breathing problems in February 2002. He kept going back month after month, and his condition grew worse. In August, doctors diagnosed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. On November 4, 2002, he was forced to stop working altogether because of respiratory failure.

  Rogers continued his rapid downhill slide. In January 2003, he was found to have new-onset asthma. He went in for a checkup at Con Ed’s Occupational Health Department in February, and the report filed there stated “extensive WTC exposure” and said he had “also developed respiratory problems.” In March, Rogers signed up for Mount Sinai’s “Health for Heroes” medical monitoring program. There Drs. Laura Bienenfeld and Rafael de la Hoz put him through a series of tests and found that he—as with other workers who had come to Mount Sinai to be screened—had symptoms of all 10 of the most prevalent ailments then connected to exposure to ground zero dust, everything from persistent dry cough to acid reflux and post-traumatic stress disorder. Doctors put him on corticosteroids to ease some of his respiratory problems, but the drugs had a devastating side effect and he developed diabetes. In November, Rogers went to the Deborah Heart and Lung Hospital in southern New Jersey, not far from his home, for tests. There he underwent a CT scan that showed “glass opacities,” defined as fine shards of glass and significant amounts of fiberglass material in his lungs. They also found signs of scarring from exposure to asbestos.