New York will remember 9/11 on Thursday, an attack that still leaves victims today

New York.- New York City is preparing to remember this Thursday the 9/11 attacks, an event that still adds names to the list of victims, who die affected by respiratory diseases. Almost 3,000 people perished on September 11, 2001, when a group of Al Qaeda terrorists crashed two planes into the Twin Towers, plus one into the Pentagon and another in Pennsylvania. But 9/11 has left in the last 24 years a trail of victims who, in the vicinity of the affected areas, inhaled dust and developed respiratory diseases or cancers.

"Since 9/11, many more people have died from the effects on their health than those who died that same day," said the director and CEO of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, Elizabeth Hillman, at a press conference on Tuesday.

For example, these years more than 400 firefighters who participated in the rescue efforts in New York have died from illnesses, compared to the 343 who lost their lives that same day, according to Hillman. According to the World Trade Center Health Program, about 400,000 people were exposed to the dust on September 11th.

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New York will remember this Thursday the victims of 9/11 in a ceremony in which the names of each of the people who lost their lives in the Twin Towers and in the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania are read each year. Immediately after the ceremony, a tribute will be paid to those who have died from illnesses related to 9/11, as well as to the workers who helped rescue victims that day and to the survivors.

Twenty-four years later, emotional aftershocks persist

Twenty-four years after 9/11, Desirée Bouchat still remembers the faces of the colleagues she left behind in the South Tower and is able to trace with precision the path she took to escape the attacks. In the press conference, Bouchat recalls that the "clear and blue" sky with which New York awoke that morning ended up turning "brown" after the arrival of the first plane, which hit the North Tower at 8:46.

After the attack, some of her colleagues and she decided to evacuate their building: "I managed to get on one of the last elevators going down to the ground floor with three colleagues. I can tell you it was 9:03 because at that time United flight 175 entered our building," she recalled, her voice breaking.

Their manager, Jim, who had encouraged them to go home after the impact of the first plane, did not make it out of the South Tower. "Even today, I come here and the faces of the names I read on the memorial come to mind," Bouchat, who today wore a vest full of brooches, some of them gifts from tourists who visit the museum, told EFE. The stories of Bouchat and others like her are what the 9/11 memorial wants to remember in Thursday's ceremony: "There are many politicians who join us that day, many important figures. None of them have a leading role for us," Hillman assured. In Thursday's ceremony, Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance will be present, although Hillman insisted that "it is important that this not be a political exercise, but one of commemoration and tribute to the people who lost their lives." JD Vance's attendance at the ceremony takes place a few days after it was announced that US President Donald Trump plans to transfer the museum and memorial to the federal government, a topic that Hillman refused to address during the press conference.