September 11 2001 Terrorist Attack

Some of the first responders who were exposed to the cocktail of toxins produced at the World Trade Center collapse are developing a form of cancer often seen in much older people, in what one doctor calls the "third wave" of disorders to emerge from the Sept. 11 disaster. Dr. Robin Herbert, codirector of the WTC Medical Monitoring Program at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, said a wide range of medical conditions had been detected since the program began in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, appearing Monday before a House subcommittee, denounced as "downright falsehoods" criticism of her statements following the Sept. 11 attacks that the air quality in areas around the World Trade Center site was safe for workers and residents.

A goal to end the search for human remains at the World Trade Center site by the fall is not realistic, and the effort will continue "for the foreseeable future," a city official said Tuesday. The city medical examiner's office will maintain a presence at the site indefinitely while construction continues in case excavations unearth more human remains, Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler said in a memo to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

The New York City medical examiner has identified the remains of another victim among more than 1,100 people who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, but whose bodies had not been found. The medical examiner Tuesday announced that the remains found in a Con Edison manhole at ground zero in October were those of Edward Ryan, 42, of Scarsdale, N.Y. Ryan was first vice president of Carr Futures Inc.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and a coalition of relatives of Sept. 11 victims reached a compromise Thursday that would allow them to briefly descend into a small section of the former World Trade Center site, which the city previously had said was unsafe for the annual memorial.

Two New York firefighters died Saturday battling a major blaze at the former Deutsche Bank building just south of ground zero, in a haunting scene in Lower Manhattan reminiscent of Sept. 11, officials said. "Our city has worked hard to recover from that awful day in September almost six years ago, and today's sad events extend the sacrifice that this fire department has made," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference at a downtown hospital, where firefighters gathered.

The CIA never developed an overall strategy for confronting Al Qaeda and let precious resources and capabilities go unused in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an internal investigation that the agency had fought to keep secret for the last two years. The report from the agency's inspector general, declassified Tuesday, adds disturbing new details to an already extensive public record of Sept. 11-related failures.

One in eight recovery and rescue workers who helped with the months-long cleanup at the World Trade Center showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a study has found. Workers with little or no experience with disasters showed the highest frequency of PTSD, said the study, published Wednesday in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The data come from the World Trade Center Health Registry's survey of 28,000 workers in 2003 and 2004.

A new survey of Sept. 11-related illnesses has found an alarming increase in asthma -- 12 times higher than normal -- among those who toiled on the toxic debris piles of ground zero. The study was released Monday by the New York City Department of Health, based on responses gathered by the World Trade Center Health Registry. The data show 3.

SECAUCUS, N.J. -- Kelly Ann Lynch, like so many others in Father Mychal Judge's vast congregation without walls, was devastated by word of the fire chaplain's death in the shadows of the World Trade Center. "Those first few weeks, it was hard to see anything good," said the Pennsylvania mother of four. "It just felt so dark and so sad and so empty." Time passed, until the darkness gave way to a bright idea.