The Lives That 9/11 Keeps Taking

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Michael Barbaro (0:27)

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

In New York City this morning, the families of those killed at the World Trade Center will gather for the 25th time Nicholas Paul Ciofalo, John E. Jean-Pierre, Maxima Jean-Pierre, one by one, Keung-Hee Casey Cho, in a solemn ritual that has become synonymous with the anniversary of the attacks.

SPEAKER_3 (1:06)

John Charles Jenkins.

Michael Barbaro (1:09)

And my brother, Thomas Harold Bowden, Jr. Among those at ground zero will be an array of public officials who assured the public starting just weeks after the attacks, that it was safe to return to Lower Manhattan, to live, work, shop, and to go to school. Today, the story of the 68 boxes of newly released documents that make clear that those original assurances were wrong. I speak with my colleague, City Hall reporter Sally Goldenberg, and to Dana Nelson, who spent her teenage years next to ground zero, about the 9-11 health crisis that has now claimed more lives than the terrorist attack itself. It's Friday, September 11th.

Hey, Dana.

Dana Nelson (2:20)

Hi, Michael.

Michael Barbaro (2:21)

How are you?

Dana Nelson (2:23)

Okay. How are you?

Michael Barbaro (2:24)

I'm okay. Can you just identify yourself for people who are going to be hearing your voice for the first time?

Dana Nelson (2:32)

Yeah. My name is Dana Nelson. I am 39 years old. I live in Brooklyn.

Michael Barbaro (2:37)

Okay. So I think we should start at the very beginning.

So can you just describe what happened to you on September 11th and what that morning was like for you? I know it was 25 years ago, so it was a while ago.

Dana Nelson (2:57)

It was my fourth day of high school. I was going to Stuyvesant High School and I was commuting in on the Staten Island ferry with my dad and it was a beautiful day. My dad worked at 2 Rector Street, so he's three blocks south of the World Trade Center and I went to Stuyvesant, so I was three blocks north of the World Trade Center. And I remember that day we were talking about how excited I was because I wanted to try out for the debate team that afternoon. Spirits were very high. I was wearing like a Care Bears t-shirt on the Staten Island ferry because I was a teenager and I was like a little punky and I thought I was being ironic and cute. And he took the train with me to chambers and said that he would just stretch his legs and walk back down to Rector Street after he walked me to school that day because it was still new. So he was still walking me and helping me get adjusted to this travel.

And everything seems to be normal until I was sitting in my English class on the ninth floor facing south. And my back was to the windows, but suddenly all of the kids facing the windows got up and ran to the windows and said, oh my god, somebody bombed the Trade Center. Because all we could see was just a gaping hole on fire at that point.

Our teacher was running late that day, and so no adult in the room, just a bunch of high school freshmen trying to make sense of what we were seeing.

Michael Barbaro (4:19)

Right, to make sense of the absolutely not make sensible for anyone of any age, let alone people of your age.

Dana Nelson (4:28)

Yeah. The principal got on the loudspeaker at some point during all of this and told us, we were going to go about business as usual for now. So the bell rang. I went down to the second floor from the next class, which was history. And from the second floor, there were too many buildings to see what was going on out the windows. So we asked to put the news on. And then suddenly the picture on the news shook, and it went to just static. And my classroom windows were hit with a wall of dust.

At that point, they started evacuating us, and the entire school was crushing out of the north side emergency exit doors, and then we were just told to run north.

Michael Barbaro (5:12)

This might sound like a strange question, but once you're outdoors, and now both of the towers had collapsed, what did the air smell like, and what did it feel like?