For the twenty-third anniversary of 9/11, Undicisettembre is offering its readers the personal account of survivor Anne Marie Principe. Anne Marie was on her way to her office near the World Trade Center when the first plane struck. After surviving the attacks, she became an advocate for healthcare treatments and co-founded Affinity Healthcare Advocates (AHA), an organization dedicated to raising funds for 9/11 survivors' medical treatments and advocating for state and federal coverage of the healthcare costs associated with illnesses caused by the attacks.
Donations to support AHA are welcome and can be done at this address.
We would like to thank Anne Marie Principe for what she does and for her availability and willingness to help.
Undicisettembre: Can you give us a general account of what you saw and experienced on 9/11?
We could not tell it was an airliner. We could only see a gaping hole in the building. There were birds on fire. People in the towers started to break windows, probably to breathe, to get air. The we saw something coming out of those windows. Initially, we thought it was furniture being thrown from the openings, then we realized it was people jumping.
Fifteen minutes later, we saw the second plane coming, but in a situation like that your brain does not compute what you are seeing. It was impossible to understand what was happening. At that moment it became apparent that this was intentional and that also the first one, as this second one, was an airliner and not a small aircraft. I remained in the streets, probably from shock. Before we had realized it was intentional we were all curious what it was and that people were okay, but the second plane changed it all: people were just heated screaming in shock, it was indescribable and all you could hear were sirens. To this day if I hear a continuous siren it unsettles me, it bothers me.
We saw rescuers coming to the scene, they weren't even talking to one another, they were concerned about running into that building to get people out, there wasn't time for them to talk or to stop.
There were lots of horrific things that we witnessed and we remained watching this in horror. That went on until we felt the ground shake beneath our feet. It was a sound like a freight train. We looked up and we saw the South Tower like it was melting. This also was incomprehensible: it just came down, it collapsed and debris flew everywhere. When the first tower came down people went quiet for the chaos and again all you could hear were sirens and horns going off.
I was not hit but I was covered in dust. There was another ferry location north of the World Trade Center and I started to walk four miles to get out of the city and take another ferry. While I was walking we felt and heard the second tower collapsing, we turned around and saw the North Tower was no longer there. It was gone. It had vanished. That was startling, to look and to see that these two tall powerful structures no longer existed. They were just smoking dust.
Once we got across the water to the landing we could still see what was going on. They kept us there at that site because at that time no one really knew. Were there other planes coming in? What will happen next? They didn't have information so they shut the roads down both for emergency vehicles to get through and for people to remain safe. So they didn't release us until about 4:30 or 5 o'clock that night. We couldn't get through to our families because the cellphone units were on top of the towers, so our cell phones and radios all went silent. Moreover of course many people were trying to make phone calls and it literally overloaded the system. So my family did not know that I was still alive.
I went to the emergency room immediately after and it didn't matter what they gave me, my body and my mind were so traumatized I just couldn't stop shaking.
I went back to the city the next day, and all the days after because it was my company and I didn't know what else to do. This had been my successful small business for many years. I had a lease, I had people I was responsible to, so I went in everyday hoping to recover, but that was not to come for us. On the contrary we almost begun to get sick immediately. You can hear my voice, my vocal cords were damaged by the dust. They were so irritated and burned, that it impacts my voice to this day.
Undicisettembre: How did you restart your company after 9/11?
Anne Marie Principe: I'm still not sure how we did anything. We had no phone lines, we had no internet, we had no access and our mail was even anthraxed so we couldn't get mail. It was almost impossible to run a business and that was how I came to form a small business lobby with some other small businesses. This amazing attorney named Jeannine Chanes stepped forward to help us form officially a small business lobby and we began to talk to our city council, our senators and our congress people to try to get our streets open and our phone lines back.
Those government agencies had no guideline for how to help us or what to do. They had to restore sewers which were over 100 years old, all the phone lines had to be restored too and this was New York, a city of 8 million people and 12,000 small businesses downtown alone without counting the residents. It was a monumental task for them. When the towers came down, they shook the surrounding areas so badly that they had also to ensure that the other buildings were safe for people to go into.
9/11 changed me forever, it was an incredible catalyst for change. When something that horrific happens to you people will say you don't have a choice, but indeed you do have a choice. You can either collapse, do nothing and fall into despair, or you can choose to go on and to do something. I felt so powerless. We all had lost businesses, colleagues, friends, and our city looked like it was bombed. You're in ruins and for me being able to do something gave me back that feeling of power that there was something I could do to help fix this, to make the change.
Undicisettembre: Would you like to tell us to tell us something about what you do now as an advocate for healthcare? Because you're still very involved with this, so I think it's very relevant.
Anne Marie Principe: While I was trying to get my business up and running again the things that were important to me had completely changed and I realized that the work that I was doing, which was successful, didn't make a difference and I wanted to make the difference. So I started to advocate for healthcare; there was a clinic downtown funded by Tom Cruise that was treating people, I worked with that foundation for some time raising funds to help other people get treated. I just found the place that I was supposed to be, I found something I was very good at. It was something that meant a lot to me and to other people.
It helped me to heal mental health wise, it made a tremendous difference for me and on how I see things. There are serious mental health issues in my community. These were civilians that were basically in a war zone that was under attack and people don't know how to cope with that. So finding ways to get people treated physically and mentally was very important to me.
I began to work with Capitol Hill a lot, because those people had the most power to create that change to pass bills to fund healthcare. Most recently, I've been working with a veterans coalition of fifty organizations of first responders, survivors and veterans who also experienced serious mental health issues, PTSD or suicidal tendencies. We have found that psychedelics are some of the most incredible treatment options for mental health and that they are literally a cure. It's very hard to go to therapy and repeat your horrific story to a therapist week after week, so antidepressants and psychiatry alone are not a fix. Right now we have a psychedelic bill moving through Congress and it does look like it's going to pass, it will be a historic bill and it will reschedule psychedelics for mental health treatments.
 |
| Affinity Healthcare Advocates, l'associazione fondata da Anne Marie Principe |
Undicisettembre: So you're also in touch with a lot of other 9/11 survivors. Do you guys ever ask about it? What are other people's accounts like?
Anne Marie Principe: We have two ceremonies every year, on September 11 and May 30, because that was the closing of what we call "the pit". What was left of the towers was just a giant pit several stories down, I can't even describe to you how vast it was, where they had dug out all of the debris and cleaned the area so that it could be rebuilt. So May 30 and September 11 every year the first responders, survivors and residents come together at Ground Zero to meet and remember. There is peace amongst us given by the fact that you are with someone who completely understands what you went through, what you feel and what you continue to go through. Because this doesn't end for us, it just doesn't. We are all sick and there are more than 6000 people that have died from the toxic dust since that day.
I have a text chain with six or seven female responders. One of the interesting things that I found, being one myself, is that women are often left out of the conversation. People don't acknowledge that the women were there helping and working on the pile, taking care of people bandages, food, any kind of service. The women were there as well and they are often forgotten and left out of many of the healthcare discussions.
There are reproductive issues and fertility issues, our cancers were only included in the program 10 years after men's particular issues were taken care of. We are not really represented on the committee for the healthcare program and this is something that we often speak about: how do we address that? The next thing I'm looking to do is to correct that piece of injustice.
There were pregnant women on 9/11, those women gave birth to children who are now sick and from it and the government will not recognize that. Those children have issues with their bones and their lungs, they're not as tall as other children, they have cognitive issues. This is also part of what I do, we call it "The sisterhood of Ground Zero". These women are coming together and saying "We have to advocate for ourselves. We have to find all the other women and make sure our voices are heard." It took us over a decade for those women to be covered and there are women who have already passed.
Undicisettembre: What do you think about how the government reacted in the first place? I see you are somehow criticizing but I think that probably this needs to be elaborated.
Anne Marie Principe: Initially, I concede that nobody knew what to do. How do you know what to do when something like this happens? What do you do? Where do you start? They just didn't even know where to begin. But my greater understanding came as we started to do hearings at the City Hall and at Capitol Hill, they were denying that we were getting sick.
The EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, lied when they said the air was safe, I was actually at the hearing on Capitol Hill when they finally admitted they didn't even have equipment that could measure what we were hit with. Rather than say "Our equipment can't even measure this" they were just like "You know what? We don't understand this. Let's just say it's okay."
Intellectually, I get they made a conscious choice to send us back in. They needed to show that New York City was strong and it was going to recover. Wall Street is the financial capital of the world and you couldn't let it fall. So we were the price that was paid, it was the need of the few versus the need of the many. Emotionally, I think "Have you intentionally sent us back in and you asked us to pay a price but then you're not willing to cover that cost?" The city didn't want to cover it, the state didn't want to cover it, nobody wanted to cover it and finally it became an issue with the federal government. Getting Congress and Senate to approve those funds took nearly 10 years. In that time many people passed from their illnesses.
Had they initially had us do chelation, take medications or supplements, it probably would have saved many lives. For myself, I had done a detox program to get the toxins out of my body. It wasn't until 2018 that I developed my cancer and I believe that that detox extended and saved my life. I don't know if I'd still be here without that detoxification. It is disappointing to me that we still have to fight our government to take care of us. It feels like a calling.
Undicisettembre: How does 9/11 affect your everyday life?
Anne Marie Principe: It is something I am forced to think about. My voice is a constant reminder, my breathing irritates when the air quality is not good and I can't leave my house on those days. We send alerts to each other when the air quality is poor to remind others not to go outside. I had a brain tumor that had to be removed, in 2018 I developed a breast cancer and a few weeks ago I finished my eleventh surgery.
My body bears the scars of 23 years. Waking up in the morning and breathing alone is a constant reminder of 9/11. It doesn't end for us. The needs of my community are important to me and I do believe doing something positive and proactive is empowering. I will not stop my work until this is made right.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento