Fireman heading south on the West Side Highway and past Stuyvesant High School (right) towards the remains of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. (photo by Gabe Palacio/ImageDirect)
There were children on the ground when the World Trade Center towers collapsed. Many of them attended my former high school, Stuyvesant, which was located mere blocks from ground zero.
Those students experienced a terrifying evacuation as the dust cloud surged around them — and the danger didn’t end that day. They were sent back to the building less than a month after the attack. Despite government assurances that the air was safe, many became sick breathing the acrid fumes of ground zero.
In the aftermath of the attack, author and activist Lila Nordstrom led the charge to fight for health benefits for her classmates. Nordstrom tells the story of her experience witnessing 9/11 and advocating for fellow survivors in her moving new book, “Some Kids Left Behind: A Survivor's Fight for Health Care in the Wake of 9/11.”
Nordstrom will be on The Uprising with me today from 12-1 PM talking about her story and what it taught her about the needs of communities where disaster strikes. She will be taking questions from readers in the comments on this page.
One thing that I found so impactful about this book is that it recalls the experience of being a child on 9/11 in very vivid, conversational terms.
That really resonated with me. I left Stuy for a school in Brooklyn so I had my own terrible outerborough experience that day. Still, knowing so many people who were really close to Ground Zero made it extra clear for me how much more removal I had from 9/11 than others. I think, outside of New York, people lost that perspective a bit. I remember going off to college a year later and being frustrated by feeling like people out there in New England made 9/11 "about them" even though I knew that, even as a New Yorker, it wasn't even really about me.
Lila chronicles that really well and describes how even though September 11th wasn't "the same emergency" for everyone even though "everybody on Earth believes they personally experienced 9/11." I found that to be really important perspective we see far too rarely in discussions of the attack.
All of that being said, and knowing all too well how much less impactful the disaster was for me than others, I have been thinking a lot about it as I do every year. My experience that say involved a stressful, smoke filled trip across Brooklyn. I was worried my mom, who often worked at the towers, was missing. When I got home, Stuy had been turned into a morgue. I saw footage of bodies going in and out of the school without that explanation. It terrified me that my friends there were dead until I was unable to get on the phone.
Everyone in the country - however far from ground zero - experienced some level of trauma that day. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how simply unjust it was that children had to experience the trauma of that day and all of the fear and violence that flowed from it.
Lila's book makes this point with amazing clarity, emotion, and even sometimes, humor. With detailed research that outlines just how many policy failures contributed to children being exposed to toxic chemicals at Stuy, it is also essentially gripping reporting on a scandalous leadership failure.
I can't recommend this book enough and want to thank Lila for coming by today!
I will try to keep an eye on this thread in case anyone comes in with questions later on. We'd love to keep the conversation going!
You referenced how the official WTC Health Program didn't accommodate enough people. I just watched the Netflix movie "Worth," which provides a real in-depth look at some of the processes that were put in place to compensate and care for victims after 9/11. One thing that's really clear in looking back at this, is the fact that, following something this horrible, it's really impossible to find perfect solutions.
Obviously, with violence on this kind of massive scale, it was going to be impossible to put everything right. Still, I think your story makes clear just how badly officials handed the air quality issues in Lower Manhattan and in the halls of Stuy. Based on your years of work on this, what do you think a just response from the government would have looked like?
Lila Nordstrom was a member of the class of 2002 at Stuyvesant High School. She was days into senior year on September 11th, 2001 and the school was. one of the closest to the World Trade Center.
After witnessing the attack and escaping Lower Manhattan that day, Lila became one of the leading advocates for her fellow classmates who experienced serious health problems as a result of long term exposure to the toxic air around ground zero. Nordstrom shares her stories from that day and her years of working to get care for other survivors in her excellent new book "Some Kids Left Behind."
I was actually a classmate of Lila's at Stuy, but I ended up switching schools and wasn't there that day. Among my friends, Lila is a bit of a hero and rockstar for her work on these issues and I am genuinely honored to have her here with us today.
To kick this off, your book recounts how the story of what happened to the kids at Stuy was drowned out a bit in everything else that happened after 9/11. This is really one of the undercovered tragedies of the day. For anyone not familiar with these issues, can you tell us a bit about just how toxic the air was and how many students and staffers at the school were impacted by it.
You spent years working to get health benefits for your fellow classmates. In an environment where 9/11 and supporting New Yorkers was supposedly top of mind, why was this difficult?
One thing that I think is particularly important about your book is that you describe how the lessons you learned in this effort could apply to other disaster communities. You also provide resources for people interested in similar advocacy. What is your key takeaway about the needs of communities after disaster strikes and what needs to be done for the government to respond adequately?
One thing that I found so impactful about this book is that it recalls the experience of being a child on 9/11 in very vivid, conversational terms.
That really resonated with me. I left Stuy for a school in Brooklyn so I had my own terrible outerborough experience that day. Still, knowing so many people who were really close to Ground Zero made it extra clear for me how much more removal I had from 9/11 than others. I think, outside of New York, people lost that perspective a bit. I remember going off to college a year later and being frustrated by feeling like people out there in New England made 9/11 "about them" even though I knew that, even as a New Yorker, it wasn't even really about me.
Lila chronicles that really well and describes how even though September 11th wasn't "the same emergency" for everyone even though "everybody on Earth believes they personally experienced 9/11." I found that to be really important perspective we see far too rarely in discussions of the attack.
All of that being said, and knowing all too well how much less impactful the disaster was for me than others, I have been thinking a lot about it as I do every year. My experience that say involved a stressful, smoke filled trip across Brooklyn. I was worried my mom, who often worked at the towers, was missing. When I got home, Stuy had been turned into a morgue. I saw footage of bodies going in and out of the school without that explanation. It terrified me that my friends there were dead until I was unable to get on the phone.
Everyone in the country - however far from ground zero - experienced some level of trauma that day. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how simply unjust it was that children had to experience the trauma of that day and all of the fear and violence that flowed from it.
Lila's book makes this point with amazing clarity, emotion, and even sometimes, humor. With detailed research that outlines just how many policy failures contributed to children being exposed to toxic chemicals at Stuy, it is also essentially gripping reporting on a scandalous leadership failure.
I can't recommend this book enough and want to thank Lila for coming by today!
I will try to keep an eye on this thread in case anyone comes in with questions later on. We'd love to keep the conversation going!
You referenced how the official WTC Health Program didn't accommodate enough people. I just watched the Netflix movie "Worth," which provides a real in-depth look at some of the processes that were put in place to compensate and care for victims after 9/11. One thing that's really clear in looking back at this, is the fact that, following something this horrible, it's really impossible to find perfect solutions.
Obviously, with violence on this kind of massive scale, it was going to be impossible to put everything right. Still, I think your story makes clear just how badly officials handed the air quality issues in Lower Manhattan and in the halls of Stuy. Based on your years of work on this, what do you think a just response from the government would have looked like?
Lila Nordstrom was a member of the class of 2002 at Stuyvesant High School. She was days into senior year on September 11th, 2001 and the school was. one of the closest to the World Trade Center.
After witnessing the attack and escaping Lower Manhattan that day, Lila became one of the leading advocates for her fellow classmates who experienced serious health problems as a result of long term exposure to the toxic air around ground zero. Nordstrom shares her stories from that day and her years of working to get care for other survivors in her excellent new book "Some Kids Left Behind."
I was actually a classmate of Lila's at Stuy, but I ended up switching schools and wasn't there that day. Among my friends, Lila is a bit of a hero and rockstar for her work on these issues and I am genuinely honored to have her here with us today.
To kick this off, your book recounts how the story of what happened to the kids at Stuy was drowned out a bit in everything else that happened after 9/11. This is really one of the undercovered tragedies of the day. For anyone not familiar with these issues, can you tell us a bit about just how toxic the air was and how many students and staffers at the school were impacted by it.
You spent years working to get health benefits for your fellow classmates. In an environment where 9/11 and supporting New Yorkers was supposedly top of mind, why was this difficult?
One thing that I think is particularly important about your book is that you describe how the lessons you learned in this effort could apply to other disaster communities. You also provide resources for people interested in similar advocacy. What is your key takeaway about the needs of communities after disaster strikes and what needs to be done for the government to respond adequately?