9/11 Special: Ten Years Later, 9/11 Still Haunts Americans

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Bin 1 Laden 2 is dead, but some Americans are still struggling with their experiences and memories of the disaster.

As Su Yi reports, some of them are still suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorders 3, while others are fighting against respiratory illnesses or even cancer.

 

John Marshall is a retired 4 New York police detective who spent weeks on the debris 5 at Ground Zero. Now he has throat cancer and speaks through a tracheal tube. He has lot a lot of weight.

"When I retired I was probably about three-twenty. I'm about two-twenty-five now. I was a bull. And now I'm just like, uh, slowly wasting away."

Marshall believes his cancer was caused by his time as a first responder.

However, while people have blamed everything from strange rashes to skin cancer on the dust of 9/11, experts say there lacks of strong evidence to link these afflictions with the event.

But on the other hand, most scientists are confident there's a link with different kinds of afflictions, such as nightmares, depression and anxiety, caused by the experiences of the disaster.

Over 10-thousand city workers who spent time clearing ground zero of debris have sued the city government and contractors 6 in relation to their health problems.

Although a legal settlement worth over 700 million US dollars was reached this year, for most of them like Firefighter Adam Lake, the memory of 9/11 and the work to clear the debris still haunts them every day.

"You know you live with it. It's not something that you can just turn off. We live with it every day."

Lake remembers he was stunned 7 at how the remains 8 of his 11 fellow firemen had settled in the debris: in the same order of rank and position as the firefighters would line up when responding to New York City fires.

Over in Florida, the pupils who were with President George W when he paid a routine visit to the school on that fateful day, say being a part of history made them mature faster.

"The 16 kids, you know, who else can say they were with the president on September 11? That's our age. No one. And that's an honor, obviously. But in that moment, I think we all matured maybe a little bit."

Despite the suffering and sacrifices made by Americans, intelligence officials are warning that the war on terror may be still far from over.

Former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff:

"It has really become like a hydra 9 with a lot of different heads. And my theory has been that in many ways, as a younger generation comes up, we may find that they're more dangerous because they're no longer locked into the strategies that we're accustomed to facing, but they're going to have new strategies."

New York Fireman Adam Lake says one joy to look forward to with each anniversary is the visits from families of the men he lost that day.

"When you go upstairs there's faces of the guys we lost and it's just a reminder 10 that, one, this job is serious and how much they sacrificed and what they taught us."

Millions of Americans like Lake may have different opinions on whether their country won the fight, but they all know what they have taken away from that tragic 11 day.

For CRI, I'm Su Yi.