City of Dust

by Anthony DePalma

  The persistent need for answers is often accompanied by a twin desire to rearrange fate. As the years following the disaster have accumulated, it has become clearer not just to Jones, but to many others touched by the dust, that opportunities for minimizing the post-9/11 tragedy were repeatedly missed. Enough scientific evidence has been collected to leave no real doubt that exposure made many people suffer, though certainly not everyone who breathed the dust. The recovery of Lower Manhattan was a complex operation—spontaneous yet long-lasting—marked by thousands of small decisions that were based on thousands of simple assumptions, each one defined by a certain logic that, independently, would not lead toward the sickening of thousands of people who came to help. And yet....

  Each one of the decisions represented a turning point where, had someone or some agency acted differently, a whole series of events might have radically changed course. Individual actions were all interrelated so that, as with a nuclear reaction, one event led in a direct line to another, and then another, in a powerful chain reaction. The cumulative effect of all the individual acts helped open the door to disaster. Such critical moments as these arose in each aspect of the disaster response, and they can be divided into distinct groups of decisions: those that were mostly political; or scientific; or related to health, legal, or basic issues about safety on the site.

  Much of what happened in 2001 and 2002 has been second-guessed, and a mythology has grown up around some of it. One issue in particular is raised perhaps more often than any other, and that is the decision by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) not to enforce its own workplace safety rules. Instead, the agency entered into a cooperative agreement with all who were involved in the recovery to voluntarily comply with safety regulations. Ground zero became the biggest project the agency ever undertook, and it lasted longer than any other. More than 1,000 OSHA employees were involved, and they distributed 130,000 respirators. Still, the argument usually plays out along these lines: If OSHA had aggressively enforced the rules, workers would have been cited for not wearing safety gear, and their employers would have been fined so much they could not have afforded to ignore the rules. But evidence suggests this is not necessarily so.

  The cooperative agreement marked one of the few instances in which labor, management, and government agreed to work together at ground zero. Although a spirit of cooperation overcame the nation after 9/11, on the ground, the old jealousies and competition remained very much alive. The labor agreement was notable in not having been shaped or distorted by the climate of doubt that had been created at the outset of the disaster. And it was not without precedent. The agency had had similar arrangements with contractors on some of the biggest construction projects in New York just before 9/11. The idea of working with the private sector instead of holding a hammer over the companies was a reflection of the Bush administration’s laissez-faire approach, but the results had generally been accepted as satisfactory before 9/11. And at ground zero, despite the hellish conditions, not one life was lost during the cleanup. Much smaller and more orderly construction sites in New York have not matched that record.

  The alternative to the cooperative agreement would have meant OSHA inspectors issuing citations, which would have led to hearings and, eventually, fines against employers for noncompliance. But that process could have taken months and would have had limited impact. Work was done on a time-and-material basis. Fines would have been built into the fees they charged (especially with the city demanding that the job be completed as quickly as possible). In essence, the city would have ended up paying the fines itself. OSHA also would not have had the power to enforce workplace safety rules over the firefighters, police officers, and other uniformed workers, further weakening the agency’s ability to keep everyone safe through enforcement.

  Still, many insist that because OSHA acted in an advisory role, unnecessary problems arose, especially after the rescue phase ended in late September. Compliance with respirator rules dropped then and kept dropping when laborers saw there were few or no consequences to leaving off the sweaty masks that made difficult tasks even more difficult.

  In other moments, political decisions stole opportunities for limiting the damage the dust caused. One such moment came when perception trumped science. The early responders on the scene, taking stock of the incredibly diverse mixture of elements in the debris, and with an understanding that the buildings had imploded with pulverizing force, knew that the dust would be dangerous to breathe. There was a clear expectation that once there was no one left to rescue, ground zero would be declared a Superfund hazardous waste site. In fact, a scientist for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had recommended it. That would have imposed the kind of work safety rules that apply to all designated contaminated sites, including hazardous waste landfills. There was no doubt that the debris contained asbestos, benzene, and highly caustic cement dust, among other dangerous elements. The detection of any one of the toxic materials could have triggered orders to wear special protective gear. But in the minds of some officials, declaring 16 acres of Lower Manhattan a Superfund site would have blighted that part of the city the way the infamous Love Canal poisoned the name of Niagara Falls, New York. And that possibility was considered absolutely unacceptable while the city was attempting to regain its footing. The city applied the same thinking years later to cleanup projects at the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek in Brooklyn, where New York officials resisted Superfund designation because they feared it would drive off private developers. Even so, the Gowanus officially was added to the Superfund list in 2010.

  Making ground zero a Superfund site would not have doomed Wall Street. With the right degree of scientific data, the city could have established a core area, or “hot zone,” and set up aggressive monitoring while cleanup proceeded. That core could have been surrounded by a transition zone. Beyond that would lie the remainder of Lower Manhattan, where the air might truly have been “safe to breathe” for most people, excluding the sick, the young, and the elderly. This kind of action would have required transparency and a willingness to level with New Yorkers, but it could have been done. In 2001, around 38 Superfund sites existed in New York, but the city learned to live with them and, eventually, all but ignore them. In fact, ground zero has been behind barricades since 2001, and the toxic shell of the Deutsche Bank building has shadowed the area for most of the decade. Workmen disassembling the contaminated building were forced to wear respirators and Tyvek suits. But delis and pizzerias a block away offered their lunchtime specials as though nothing had happened. (Two firefighters who died in 2007 trying to put out a fire in the Deutsche Bank building that was started by careless workmen represented two more fatalities than occurred in the nine months of the ground zero cleanup itself). The ill-fated building still loomed over a mostly empty ground zero as a new decade began, a mocking tribute to the haste with which the trade center debris was swept away in preparation for the rebuilding that had yet to occur.

  Had ground zero become a Superfund site as soon as the rescue phase ended, there might have been less confusion over Christie Whitman’s statements concerning the safety of the air because care could have been taken to differentiate the site from the rest of Lower Manhattan. And Whitman might not have been so susceptible to the pressure from the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality to downplay the hazards so that Wall Street could reopen. The danger zone, where the air was not safe, would have been clearly marked. Still, even without a Superfund designation, Whitman could have been much more precise with her statements. And the media could have pressed her for clarification. Had some reporter asked, “Where exactly is the air safe?” when she said there was no immediate danger, much confusion could have been avoided, and the entire storyline of the aftermath of 9/11 might have been different. Had the New York Times been as critical of Whitman’s September statements as it would be of those made by officer Cesar Borja’s family years later, or if the New York Daily News had treated the
Borja story with the same skepticism with which it viewed the statements of the EPA, there would have been more clarity and less misunderstanding all around.

  The command structure for the rescue and recovery operation was never as clearly defined as it needed to be. After the rescue operation ended, command was split between fire department brass and the Department of Design and Construction. Even the super-efficient forest fire service team could not help then because of the shared command’s unavoidable inefficiencies and confusion. In large measure, this situation arose because of the rush of emotions directed toward firefighters and the tragic losses they suffered. Respecting them prevented a proper command structure with a single head from being put into place. Such conflicts were largely avoided at the Pentagon. Although that was a significantly smaller and less complex recovery operation, it presented some of the same dangers and challenges as those at ground zero. But the response there was managed so that the command structure shifted as the workload changed.

  At first the Arlington County Fire Department was in charge of putting out the fire and making sure it didn’t start up again while the bodies of 184 victims were recovered. After ten days, the fire and rescue phase ended and the FBI assumed command of the site, initiating a crime scene investigation. Finally, when the FBI was finished collecting evidence, the Pentagon’s own construction management team, backed by private contractors, came in to complete the cleanup in just a month and a day. There never was more than a single incident commander at a time. Work rules were clear and the phases of the project were universally understood. The entire area was secured the very first day, and entry into the zone was tightly controlled. Although recovery workers were exposed to dust and incinerated building materials, they were fortunate in that a recent renovation of that section of the Pentagon had removed asbestos, lead paint, and other hazards. Nonetheless, worksite safety rules—requiring Tyvek suits and respirators at all times—were universally enforced, although some FBI agents complained that they were more appropriate for industrial operations than a crime scene investigation.2 Still, not one of more than 3,500 people who worked on the recovery there became sick.

  In New York, the enormous emotional stakes of the disaster made command far more difficult. But the reality came down to this: Responders risked their lives to recover the remains of the victims, a task that was supremely noble but that, in the end, did not require such haste. Only one person had the moral authority that could have divided the operation into the same kind of distinct phases as at the Pentagon, providing the opportunity for properly addressing safety issues. Mayor Rudy Giuliani had earned the respect of the city—and, in fact, the whole country. It was up to him to make the case that the city had already suffered enough and would not allow one more person to be injured. But he didn’t. His supporters deny that this was possible, pointing to an ugly incident in early November when police and firefighters scuffled near ground zero, leading to a few black eyes, a number of arrests (charges later were dropped), and a lot of frayed emotions. But the brawl did not occur because the mayor tried to shut down the site to impose stricter safety regulations.

  Firefighters had amassed that morning to protest the mayor’s decision to reduce the number of firefighters on the job from 64 to 25. Most of the firefighters still on the pile worked as spotters, keeping watchful eyes for signs of human remains. Only 91 of the 343 missing firefighters had been recovered by then. The firefighters, already antagonized by Giuliani over the issue of the malfunctioning walkie-talkie radios, saw the move not as an expression of concern about their safety, but as an attempt to accelerate the cleanup before Giuliani’s term ended, replacing firefighters with mechanical cranes that could dig faster. As the angry firefighters, some in their turnout coats, marched toward the trade center site that morning, they pushed over police barricades. Police pushed back, and the scuffle quickly got out of hand. In comments to reporters later that day, Giuliani revealed how much of a sore point the firefighters had become. “Firefighters will continue to have a role,” he said. “But what they’re not going to be allowed to do, and they were doing it in the past, is to take over the whole site.”3 The brawl said more about firefighter hubris than about any lack of respect for the sacrifice of those who died. And those same hoary traditions that prevented firefighters from listening to outsiders who tried to protect them did great harm to the firefighters and to their families, though few in the city dared say so at the time.

  The Bush White House missed several opportunities to minimize the risk to workers and residents in Lower Manhattan. Some were simple, such as forcing the conga line of dignitaries who came after the President to send a different message by wearing even a small N-95 paper mask while touring the site. But the White House, in cooperation with City Hall, stuck to a single message: There was little to worry about. That unwillingness to level with the public sowed misunderstanding, which turned into obstacles when Congress made decisions allocating money for monitoring and screening programs. It became extraordinarily difficult to lobby for medical monitoring before a Congress that believed there was nothing hazardous in the dust.

  Even when Congress came up with money for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, the mixed signals coming from ground zero led to a lack of clarity about what was happening. The fund compensated responders whose injuries and illnesses arose before the fund expired at the end of 2003. Had Washington consulted with someone such as Dr. Stephen Levin of Mount Sinai, they could have gotten a better understanding of the medical consequences of exposure and a more forthright evaluation of the risk. Then it would have made sense for the fund, with its unlimited budget, to have operated for several more years, covering the bulk of the people with legitimate claims who would eventually go on to sue the city. But without that insight, the fund expired just as many responders were realizing that their hacking cough was not getting better. This set up a vastly inequitable situation in which some responders were compensated but others were not, even when the injuries and illnesses they suffered were the same. Neither science nor medicine determined who received awards; instead, it was an arbitrary date and the random act of when the illness made itself known.

  Washington did eventually reach out to help ailing responders who got sick after the fund expired, but instead of reviving the fund, Congress channeled most of the injured workers into the federal courts, one of the least efficient ways of compensating people with difficult-to-prove exposure injuries.

  The Bush administration and Congress missed the chance to get ahead of the health crisis several times, with potentially dire consequences for responders. The government waited unconscionably long to provide money for screening and monitoring. Only after the doctors at Mount Sinai, working with labor unions, devised their own plan, rounded up political support, and made a strong case for funding did Washington reluctantly make limited emergency appropriations. But the money always trailed the need. It ran out quickly, and the screening programs were not nearly as comprehensive as they could have been, especially when they were needed most. The prohibitions on research and treatment became substantial obstacles with oversized consequences. By the time treatment money was available, thousands who needed help had simply given up.

  Some public health officials believe that New York City missed an opportunity to make safety and health a central part of the recovery when it failed to award Bechtel the contract it had sought for a comprehensive health and safety plan to cover the entire site. The New York City’s health department passed up an opportunity in the early days after the attacks to provide guidelines for physicians throughout the region who treated injured responders, instead waiting until the fifth anniversary, in 2006, to do so. And when Mayor Bloomberg in 2007 announced the appointment of a city coordinator for 9/11 programs who would do in New York what Dr. John Howard was trying to do in Washington, he named a public relations specialist, Jeffrey Hon, to the position. The office immediately slipped into bureaucratic oblivion.

  Words can
be extremely powerful, and restraint by the responders’ lawyers likely would have reduced anxiety among sick workers and kept many of them out of federal court. Each time David Worby or Paul Napoli recited the long list of ailments and diseases they believed were linked to the dust, responders everywhere anguished over their chances of getting the illnesses themselves. Cancer headlines and sound bites whipped up fear in all responders and their families, who hardly ever asked for details or proof. Many undoubtedly acted on those fears and joined the lawsuit against the city, but the sheer volume of plaintiffs so engorged the litigation that it defied simple solutions and denied those who were truly sick a timely resolution.

  But perhaps nowhere were more opportunities missed than in the basic science of determining what had occurred in the immediate aftermath of the towers’ collapse that morning, and what effect the resulting dust, ash, and gasses had on the tens of thousands of people who were exposed to it all. Time and again, simple decisions were made that took the research and analytical work down a meandering path that limited what science could achieve. And the absence of solid evidence unleashed confusion, distortion, and towering plumes of anxiety.