Toxic Legacy: A CLOUD of dust

On a sunny morning in September 2001, more than twenty seven hundred people died violently in events of unimaginable horror.

Another killer was unleashed that day. A slow silent poison that now threatens thousands of lives. the toxic dust and gases created by the disintegrating towers. An enormous compression wave pushed through the streets and into buildings with the force of a hurricane.

Watch an excerpt from 9/11: Toxic Legacy

Runs 4:39

Dr. David Prezant, the deputy medical officer of the New York City Fire Department remembers, "This sunny morning was pitch black. The ability to see in front of you was impossible. The ability to breathe was impossible and yet there was complete total silence." The dust swallowed lower Manhattan and spread outward in a giant cloud. As everyone fled, rescue workers raced into the toxic brew.

Paramedic Bill Dahl was among the many who rushed to the scene. " Within five minutes you couldn't see out of your eyes because they were caked. You found yourself spitting it out, trying to clear your nose and your mouth any way you could. When you breathe it in it burns your throat, it burns your nose, it burns your eyes and everybody coughed." That night Dahl says heavy winds turned the area into a giant sandblaster.

Jim Gilroy and his family fled their apartment three blocks north of Ground Zero. He did what he could to protect his baby daughter from the dust. "She was screaming. You're wrapping a wet cloth around her head but she's not going for it. But I was still trying it. We were just like refugees out on the street."

When Fire chief Jack Corcoran got to the site late that night, the air was still thick with dust. "There was no furniture, there was no glass, all that paper. Everything was either molten hot or pulverized. Anybody that was in that pile, I knew they weren't going to survive. There was no way they could get through that."

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