10 years later 9/11/11

The first time I visited NYC was the summer of 1993. I never made it back until the fall of 2007. On my return trip, at the top of my list was to see "Ground Zero".

I remember exactly what I was doing 10 years ago. I was living in San Francisco at the time. I got up for work that day, was mentally preparing for an interview, when I heard a lot of commotion on the radio, so I turned on the TV. They were replaying the first tower getting hit. "WTF?!?" was pretty much the only thing going through my head. The news coverage showed many New Yorkers staring in amazement, like the rest of the country was. I watched for a few minutes, but had to get ready for work and run to catch BART. At the time I was working in Oakland. Somehow, I made it on BART before they closed it down. I got to work and there were maybe 10 people there. I was told to go home. I tried to call my interview contact, but that office was closed. Every office in San Francisco and Oakland was closed.

10 years later, I'm back in SoCal. I am one-year thyroid cancer survivor. 10 years later, many of those first responders at 'ground zero' are suffering from many ailments and diseases, among them cancer. More specifically, thyroid cancer. I found this article last year (here). I'll never know how or why I got thyroid cancer, or how or why anyone gets cancer, but I think it is pretty clear that there are environmental causes. Mostly from radioactive fall out (Chernobyl, Hiroshima, and most likely from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station disaster earlier this year). Kinda crazy how no good deed goes unpunished. I think regardless of what the outcome, many of us would have done whatever we could to help if we were there, live with the consequences later.

When I made it back to NYC in 2007, I took as many pictures of "Ground Zero" that I could. Here are some of my favorite shots from that visit: