Twenty-Five Years Later: 9/11 Is Still Present on Staten Island

 

By: Lali Tobin

Edited By: Rose Kores

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Twenty-five years is long enough for an event to become history. For my family, September 11 never quite made that transition. On the morning of September 11, 2001, my father was teaching at a high school a few blocks from the World Trade Center. He witnessed the towers crumble close to him. In the aftermath, he would learn that people he knew—friends and family—were among those lost. 

My mother experienced that morning differently. She had just immigrated to the United States from the Republic of Georgia. Before coming to New York, violence and political instability were not abstract concepts to her; in fact, she was acclimatized to it. She grew up in the Soviet Union and had memories of Russian tanks moving through the streets of her home country. She came to America expecting something different. Then she watched New York come under attack. 

I was born after September 11. I cannot tell you where I was when the first plane hit the north tower or what I thought when the towers fell. I have no memory of the smoke over Lower Manhattan. And yet, growing up on Staten Island, I have never felt as though September 11 happened before my time. I inherited it. That experience is hardly unique in my borough. On Staten Island, 9/11 is not only an event in American history. It is family history, neighborhood history, public-health history, and increasingly, intergenerational responsibility. 

As the United States marks twenty-five years since the attacks, that distinction matters. An entire generation has reached adulthood without a firsthand memory of September 11. The question facing us is no longer how those who witnessed 9/11 will remember it. It is what those of us who inherited their memories will choose to do with them. 

Across the Harbor 

Staten Island’s geography has always shaped its relationship with September 11. From the northern edge of the borough, Lower Manhattan sits directly across from New York Harbor. The Staten Island Ferry has carried generations of residents toward that skyline— to offices, schools, firehouses, construction sites, restaurants, and countless other workplaces. On September 11, that ordinary relationship between Staten Island and Manhattan changed. The attack happened across the harbor, yet its consequences came home. 

At the St. George waterfront, Staten Island’s Postcards memorial faces the former site of the Twin Towers. Its granite plaques memorialize Staten Islanders killed in the attacks, turning a tragedy remembered nationally through numbers into individual names and faces. That distinction matters. 

The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people, excluding the nineteen hijackers.¹ But numbers alone cannot explain what mass loss does to a community. Every person killed belonged to networks far larger than themselves: families, schools, workplaces, fire stations, houses of worship, sports teams, neighborhoods, and blocks. 

On Staten Island, those networks overlap. For my generation, September 11 arrived through stories. I learned about that morning through my parents and through a community filled with people who had their own version of the same story, all witnessing it through their own eyes or through their loved ones: someone who was downtown, someone who was missing, someone who responded, someone who never came home. 

My father’s experience has always made those stories particularly tangible. When I imagine September 11, I do not imagine it solely through archival footage. I imagine my father standing blocks away, watching buildings that had defined New York’s skyline collapse in front of him. I think about what it must mean to walk into a classroom one morning, expecting an ordinary Tuesday, and instead witness an event that will divide American history into a before and an after. 

My mother’s experience complicated that memory further. She had come to the United States carrying memories of another political world — of the Soviet Union, of instability in Georgia, and of Russian military power appearing not on television, but in the streets around her. America was supposed to provide distance from that kind of insecurity. September 11 shattered that distance. Their experiences taught me something that statistics cannot: political violence can be experienced nationally or globally, but it is absorbed personally. Public policy must respond both ways. 

The Attack Did Not End When the Towers Fell 

For years, the most recognizable number associated with September 11 was the number of people killed. Twenty-five years later, another reality has become impossible to ignore: the human toll continued long after the events of September 11 ended. 

More than 15,000 New York City Fire Department (FDNY) members were exposed to dust, particulates, gases, chemicals, and fibers during the rescue and recovery operation following the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC).² A 2026 FDNY report found that more than 10,000 responders have now been certified with at least one 9/11-related physical health condition.³ The federal government has consequently built an extraordinary health infrastructure around a disaster that occurred a quarter-century ago. 

The World Trade Center Health Program provides monitoring and treatment for responders and survivors suffering from certified WTC-related physical and mental health conditions.⁴ As of 2026, the program serves nearly 150,000 users across all 50 states and U.S. territories.⁵ Congress has authorized the program through 2090.⁴ This may be one of the most sweeping pieces of public policy created in response to September 11. The federal government has effectively acknowledged that an attack lasting less than two hours can produce consequences requiring public intervention for nearly a century. The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund demonstrates the same reality. Congress permanently authorized the fund in 2019, extending its claim deadline to October 1, 2090.⁶ As of August 31, 2026, the fund has received more than 112,000 claims and awarded more than $18.5 billion to over 77,000 claimants.⁷ Those numbers force us to reconsider what it means for a disaster to be “over.” 

For policymakers, the lesson should extend far beyond September 11. We often measure emergency preparedness by the first hours of a catastrophe: whether first responders arrive quickly, whether hospitals function properly, whether government officials communicate effectively, and whether people can evacuate safely. But September 11 demonstrates that disaster policy must operate on two clocks. One measures minutes. The other measures generations. 

Exposure-related illnesses can emerge decades later. Mental health effects can persist throughout a person’s life. Children become caregivers for parents who were once responders. Families may experience the consequences of a catastrophe years after the television cameras have left. Emergency preparedness cannot only be about surviving the day. It must also be about surviving what the day leaves behind. 

Staten Island’s other 9/11 Site

Staten Island’s role during the aftermath is particularly important and often overlooked. After the World Trade Center collapsed, approximately 1.5 million tons of material from the site was transported to Fresh Kills on Staten Island.⁸ Thousands of workers participated in the painstaking recovery effort there. For most of its history, Fresh Kills was known as a landfill. After September 11, part of it became something else: a recovery site where debris was examined for evidence and human remains. The history of Fresh Kills complicates the geography of 9/11. 

Ground Zero was in Manhattan, but the physical aftermath of the attack extended across New York City. Staten Island did not simply mourn September 11. The borough became part of the machinery through which the city attempted to recover from it. And the recovery itself produced policy failures worth remembering. In the months following the attacks, questions emerged about whether government officials had adequately communicated the environmental dangers surrounding the World Trade Center site. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General later concluded that the agency faced significant challenges in its response and that government communications about air quality generated substantial public distrust.⁹ A separate EPA survey found that many New Yorkers wanted more timely information about air quality and did not trust the information they had received.¹⁰ Honoring responders means celebrating their courage. But it must also mean asking whether the government adequately protected the people who ran toward danger. Those are not contradictory positions. They are inseparable. 

What Does “Never Forget” Require? 

Every September, two words appear throughout New York: Never Forget. For most of my life, I understood them primarily as a promise of remembrance. But after twenty-five years, those words should mean something more. Memory without responsibility risks becoming ritual. If “Never Forget” is a national promise, then it should produce public obligations. It means maintaining medical care for responders and survivors when the television cameras are gone. It means funding research into illnesses that may not become apparent until decades after exposure. It means compensating families whose losses occurred not only on September 11, 2001, but because of the pain that has elapsed since.

The environmental response after the towers fell demonstrated how dangerous uncertain or inadequate risk communication can become during a disaster.¹¹ The continuing health crisis demonstrates why governments must consider long-term exposure when designing emergency response systems. The existence of federal health and compensation programs lasting until 2090 demonstrates that recovery cannot be constrained by political or budgetary timelines. Governments frequently respond to catastrophe when public attention is greatest. The harder test of public institutions is whether they remain committed when attention fades. September 11 asks that question of us twenty-five years later and it will ask again in another twenty-five. 

Inheriting Memory

There is an unavoidable change taking place in America’s relationship with September 11. Memory is becoming history. Children born after the attacks are now adults. We are entering government, journalism, law, education, public policy, the military, police departments, and fire stations.  Some members of my generation are now older than many of the people whose names appear on 9/11 memorials. 

We cannot remember the attacks in the same way our parents do. My father can tell me what it looked like when the towers fell because he saw them fall. I did not. My mother can describe what it felt like to arrive in a new country full of possibility, after a childhood shaped by the Soviet Union and Russian military power, only to watch her adopted city experience mass violence. I can only listen. 

But listening is not the same as being disconnected from history. It is how memory transcends  generations. The challenge is ensuring that, as first hand witnesses dwindle, September 11 does not become cleaner in our collective memory than it actually was. History tends to compress. Nearly 3,000 people become a statistic. Months of recovery become a sentence. Years of illness become a footnote. Families become numbers attached to compensation programs. 

The story of September 11 is the firefighter who entered a building while others were running out. It is the teacher standing blocks away watching the skyline collapse. It is the newly arrived immigrant realizing that crossing an ocean cannot guarantee safety. It is the sanitation worker sorting through debris at Fresh Kills. It is the responder diagnosed with cancer twenty years later. It is an empty chair at a Staten Island dinner table. Those individual stories are not separate from public policy. 

The Next Twenty-Five Years

On September 11, 2051, America will mark fifty years since the attacks. Far fewer people will be able to say “I was there.” My generation will be responsible for deciding what remains. We can allow September 11 to become a familiar sequence of images shown once each year: the planes, the smoke, the towers, the firefighters, the memorial lights. 

Or we can preserve something more difficult and more useful. We can remember the people who died that morning and those whose deaths came years later. We can remember Ground Zero and Fresh Kills. We can honor extraordinary heroism while examining governmental failures. We can protect the programs that care for those still living with the consequences of that day. And we can apply what September 11 taught us to the disasters that will inevitably confront future generations. 

My parents gave me memories of September 11 that are not technically mine. Staten Island did, too. Perhaps that is what “Never Forget” must eventually mean. There will come a day when no living American remembers watching the towers fall. When that day arrives, remembrance will no longer be something we possess. It will be something we choose. Twenty-five years after September 11, the most meaningful way to honor those we lost is not simply to remember what happened. It is to decide what their memory requires of us.

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Works Cited

 

1. National September 11 Memorial & Museum. n.d. “9/11 FAQs.” https://www.911memorial.org/connect/commemoration/September-11-2001. 
2. Fire Department of the City of New York. 2026. “FDNY Sept. 11 Health Impacts.” https://www.nyc.gov/site/fdny/about/resources/reports-and-publications/911-health-impact-reports.page. 
3. Office of the Mayor of New York City. 2026. “Mayor Mamdani and FDNY Release Report Detailing Long-Term Health Effects of 9/11 and the World Trade Center Rescue and Recovery Effort on FDNY Members.” https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/09/mayor-mamdani-and-fdny-release-report-detailing-long-term-health. 
4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2026. “The World Trade Center Health Program.” https://www.cdc.gov/wtc/. 
5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2026. “World Trade Center Health Program: Health Effects of 9/11.” https://www.cdc.gov/wtc/newsHealthExhibition_20260908.html. 
6. U.S. House of Representatives. 2019. Never Forget the Heroes: James Zadroga, Ray Pfeifer, and Luis Alvarez Permanent Authorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Act. Pub. L. No. 116-34. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1327. 
7. U.S. Department of Justice. 2026. “September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Special Master Allison Turkel Delivers Remarks at Press Briefing Encouraging 9/11 Victims to Register for the VCF.” https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/september-11th-victim-compensation-fund-vcf-special-master-allison-turkel-delivers. 
8. Office of the Mayor of New York City. 2026. “Mayor Mamdani Launches Citywide Digital Tribute to New Yorkers Who Helped Carry Us Through 9/11.” https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/09/mayor-mamdani-launches-citywide-digital-tribute-to-new-yorkers-w. 
9. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2003. EPA’s Response to the World Trade Center Collapse: Challenges, Successes, and Areas for Improvement. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-12/documents/wtc_report_20030821.pdf. 
10. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2003. Survey of Air Quality Information Related to the World Trade Center Collapse. Office of Inspector General. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-12/documents/wtc-survey_20030926.pdf. 
11. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. n.d. “EPA Response to September 11.” https://archive.epa.gov/wtc/web/html/.

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