APEX, N.C. — September marks 24 years since the Sept. 11 attacks. The attacks not only took thousands of lives and changed the nation, fallout effects are still being seen two decades later.
For years, the main resource of help for people exposed to the contaminated air is the World Trade Center Health Program, helping those showing conditions and diseases identified by Congress related to 9/11.
However, recent funding cuts and budget shortfalls have left the program and those in need in limbo with no solid answers on the program's future
What You Need To Know
- The impacts of Sept. 11 are still being felt 24 years later
- Earlier this year, cuts were made to the World Trade Center Health Program with some jobs reinstated
- Victims are concerned about the future of the program, including funding
- Lorraine Meehan watched the attacks unfold, and her husband helped clean up at Ground Zero
“It was a gorgeous day, it was exquisite… it was wonderful,” Lorraine Meehan said.
On an average day, she would get off the bus at the World Trade Center, stop and cross a walkway to the former Two World Financial Center for Deloitte, where she worked. While on the bus on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, she had a gut feeling to get off the bus and told the bus driver to let her off.
“I never did this before, ever, in the years I've worked in New York,” Meehan said.
She said she believes she would have been in the walkway between the towers and the World Financial Center when the first plane hit, an area she said received impact shock from the planes.
Meehan said at first, she thought a construction crane may have fallen but soon realized there was much worse devastation.
“Chunks of the building falling down, and they were crashing. They’re sailing past me, and there was a woman on fire, and she was running towards me,” Meehan said.
As she escaped the impact area, she said despite the pandemonium around her it was very quiet, witnessing the destruction in front of them and breathing in the air.
“The Canal Street area was just filled with people, and we were sitting on those barriers, and we just watched people jump. It was right in front of us… then all of a sudden, it imploded, and it was gone,” Meehan said. "Without a word, thousands of people, hundreds of people got up, took their bags with them and just kept walking. It was unlike anything you’d expect in a movie.”
Eventually, she was picked up by a small yacht and dropped off at Weehawken in New Jersey.
Shortly after, her future husband John, a special agent with the Department of Interior, was sent to Ground Zero to help with the bucket brigade.
“John’s position was the last in the brigade… there were body parts in the buckets, there were what looked like ash… a pencil sharpener, everything you can think of from the buildings and that was his job,” Meehan said.
She said hot days and remaining fires at Ground Zero made him and others take off their masks and hazmat suits working for days, breathing in the surrounding contaminated air.
Air, officials said, was safe to breathe.
“Maybe two years later, that's when he started to get sick,” Meehan said.
She said he began developing symptoms they heard about connected to Sept. 11. He eventually developed six of the diseases recognized by the government.
“He had a pulmonologist, a cardiologist, an EMT, a blood specialist and so on. Eventually I stopped going with him to these examinations. They seem to have his health stabilized a bit. Yet when COVID hit in 2020, he died,” Meehan said.
She lost her husband of 15 years.
“He had a massive presence” Meehan said.
After her loss, she left their home in Calabash, North Carolina, as it was too painful to be there without him. She's now navigating another loss, a loss of funding to the World Trade Center Health Program.
This year, cuts were made to the WTCHP, slicing staff by 20%, impacting thousands affected by the terrorist attacks.
“These programs are not just for first responders. There were 300,000 office workers in lower Manhattan on and after 9/11. Fifty thousand students and teachers, 25,000 downtown residents. And they have moved all over the country,” said Michael Barasch, the managing attorney of Barasch & McGarry.
Barasch represents thousands of 9/11 victims, including Meehan, who has one of the recognized diseases.
“I don’t think this was the right place to cut… I’ve contacted all my legislators, the White House and so on,” Meehan said.
Currently, over 142,000 people are enrolled in the WTCHP, with over 2,000 of the participants from North Carolina.
“This has been a gut punch to the 9/11 community. They told us, they promised us that they would take care of us. They'll never forget,” Barasch said. “That was devastating, because now it's going to take eight months to get an appointment with that health program.”
Meehan said the process to get medical funding or join the compensation fund is rigorous and drawn out, which could impact those who are hoping to enlist in the program even more.
“We want to make sure, once and for all, that this funding is permanent. So the 911 community has the health care. It needs forever. Hopefully what can be done to stop this for survivors and to get this access,” Barasch said.
In May, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said cuts made to the World Trade Center Health Program were a "mistake" but left those in need wondering about the stability of the program, especially with the funding of the program coming in shortfall.
Meehan said she asks God why she survived that day, often trying to bargain to God to be inside the building and let someone else live, as she thinks about 9/11 every day.
Part of her mission now is to keep the legacy of those who were lost alive and fight for what they no longer can, including as a volunteer with Tunnel to Towers Foundation and local organizations.
“I'm still alive. My purpose is not yet fulfilled,” Meehan said.