The city plans to convert Fresh Kills on Staten Island into a park by the year 2036, with its rolling green hills and a view of the water.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s hard to imagine that 25 years ago, 1.2 million tons of debris from the World Trade Center site was buried at the former landfill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce the towers came down, we knew immediately that we would be called into service,\u201d Martin Bellew, the former director of the Bureau of Waste Disposal, told NY1.<\/p>\n
On March 22, 2001, Fresh Kills Landfill took in its last barge of garbage. The plan was to end Staten Island\u2019s waste disposal operation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we never closed, we could have never have done this operation here,\u201d Michael Mucci, the former director of the landfill, said.<\/p>\n
Mucci says hours after the 9\/11 terror attack, his team started sending equipment to the site to help move debris.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a call at two o’clock in the morning. I had just gotten home, that there were two trucks here to deliver debris,\u201d Mucci recalled. \u201cFrom that moment on, from two o’clock in the morning on September 12th, it just built up for the next, probably a month or so, and then we were in full operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 200 Sanitation Department workers were part of the operation, which lasted until July 2002, collecting, transporting and sifting through debris.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They worked alongside a number of state and federal agencies that were sorting through materials and searching for remains.<\/p>\n
Barry Asnes, a former DSNY supervisor at Fresh Kills Landfill, remembers when the debris first started coming in.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately I saw some, you know, human remains, and yeah, that’s when it really hit me,\u201d he told NY1.<\/p>\n
Asnes worked 16-hour shifts, seven days a week, feeling an obligation to both his job and his country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were attacked on our own soil here in New York City, where I was born and raised. This was personal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In the years after Sept. 11, Asnes has had a number of different health issues, including a lung disease, asthma and post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n
But the scariest news came in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe doctor sat down next to me and said, you have cancer, and it’s all over,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat they tell us is that most of the things, the toxins we were exposed to, it takes a good 15, 20 years to really develop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asnes had stage 4 lymphoma, and needed aggressive chemotherapy immediately. In June of this year, he got some incredible news from his oncologist.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe came in and said my labs were all perfect,\u201d he said. \u201cThen she gave me a head-to-toe exam, sat me up in the chair, and she brought out this pin, and she actually pinned it on me and \u2014 it’s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
That pin represents five years of being cancer-free.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s tough to see friends passing from it and, you know, I didn’t. It’s a little bit of guilt,\u201d Asnes said.<\/p>\n
According to Bellew, more than 50 of the 200 sanitation workers at Fresh Kills have died from 9\/11-related illnesses.<\/p>\n
The toxic exposure also impacted construction workers at the piers where the debris was first loaded.<\/p>\n
Jeff Glennon, a construction superintendent for Weeks Marine, says he didn\u2019t think about the potential health repercussions in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody at that point would or could recognize that there were going to be dangers 20, 25 years, 50 years, 10 years down the road,\u201d Glennon said.<\/p>\n
Glennon was diagnosed with male breast cancer in 2019, and had to have a full left mastectomy and chemotherapy.<\/p>\n
Both Glennon and Asnes are among the thousands of people who have suffered from 9\/11-related illnesses, and while their health journeys have been tough, they’re both proud of the work they did.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a job that nobody else was gonna do as efficiently as us,\u201d Glennon said.<\/p>\n
Asnes said despite everything he has gone through in the 25 years since Sept. 11, he would \u201cdo it again in a second.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just the right thing to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to the World Trade Center Health Program, more people have died from 9\/11-related illness than the 2,977 victims who lost their lives on Sept. 11.<\/p>\n
The program has helped people who have gotten sick with 9\/11-related illnesses pay for their treatments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city plans to convert Fresh Kills on Staten Island into a park by the year 2036, with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1043437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,31018,7448,126295,210,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,9294,52,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284],"class_list":["post-1043436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-app-health","tag-app-top-stories","tag-emma-barnett","tag-health","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-top-stories","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vod"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117214335844380810","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1043436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1043437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1043436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1043436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1043436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}