How many rescued from 911

Canavan said he and four of his colleagues emerged in the area underground at the World Trade Center filled with shops. That's when the South Tower collapsed. Less than 30 minutes later, the North Tower would also fall. Everything went dark. His last thoughts were of his son's upcoming third birthday party, and how he would never meet the little girl his pregnant wife was carrying. Soon, however, he "started to taste grit in my teeth and I started to smell smoke and I said, 'OK, I'm alive'.

Canavan said he and a still unidentified man were saved because a large cement wall had fallen over them, creating a safe pocket in the pile of twisted steel rebar and debris. Ultimately, we wedged a perfectly angled piece of rebar between Jimeno and the cinder blocks that were crushing him, and were able to get him out. About eight hours and hundreds of rescuers later, we were finally able to pull out McLoughlin the next morning.

We worked until supervisors forced us to get medical attention. Those two men were all of us, and we used every bit of training, strength, and even gallows humor to free them. We worked on the pile for nine months. Now our families worry as we cough and use inhalers to treat our labored breathing. That gallows humor still keeps us intact as we discuss our ailments the way elderly people might. Many of us are managing the most serious medical conditions, like cancer, as a result of our work, so we need it.

Both are former New York City police officers. You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page , on Twitter usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. The Department of Design and Construction contracted five construction companies to clear the rubble of the WTC from Ground Zero in order to reopen Wall Street as quickly as possible the NYC Department of Sanitation deployed thousands of staff to clean the area around the Stock Exchange and lower Manhattan in general.

Families of victims objected that the authorities improperly handled body remains. Piles of organic and non-organic waste from the rubble of the Twin Towers had, they argued, been hastily displaced and indistinctly buried along with conventional sources of municipal waste. The remains of a privately owned vertical tower had been used to patch a broken horizontal public road network.

As the families of victims filed a lawsuit for mismanagement of human remains against the municipality, the authorities objected that the debris had been inspected following a meticulous process of classification.

In the end, the judge sided with NYC. With time, however, a regime of land reclamation covered up the presence of the dead. Since , the Fresh Kills dumping ground has gradually morphed into a municipal recreational park , accessible by bike, canoe and horseback. Once completed, the expansive area will be almost three times the size of Central Park and covered in vegetation and synthetic playgrounds. A marshland in the 19th century, Fresh Kills is now an eco park, including a human-made wetland, secured by a system for the capture and treatment of underground toxic gases that heats 20, local homes.