Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
5 Facts about the 9/11 aftermath
5 Facts about the 9/11 aftermath
Dec 25, 2025 11:56 AM

Today marks the 16th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil. Here are five facts you should know about what happened in the aftermath of the events on September 11, 2001:

1. It took 99 days—until December 19, 2001—for thefires at Ground Zeroto be extinguished.Cleanup at Ground Zero wasn’t pleted until May 30, 2002. It took 3.1 million hours of labor to clean up 1.8 million tons of debris at a total cost of cleanup of $750 million.

2.There were 20 people pulled from the rubble in the two days after the attack. On the day following the attacks, 11 people were rescued from the wreckage, including six firefighters and three police officers. Two Port Authority police officers were also rescued after spending nearly 24 hours beneath 30 feet of rubble.

3.In 2010, Congress created theWTC Health Programtoprovidemedical monitoring and treatment for emergency responders, recovery, and cleanup workers, and volunteers who helped after the terrorist attacks.As of2015, the number ofGround Zero responders and others afflicted with 9/11-linked cancers has hit 3,700. Those suffering cancers certified by the WTC Health Programinclude 1,100 members of the New York fire department,2,134 police and first responders, and 467 survivors such as downtown workers and residents. Many have more than one type of cancer.

4.Most of the steel from the World Trade Center wreckage was sent to New Jersey salvage yards where it was broken down and sent all over the world for reuse. Nearly 350,000 tons of the steel was sent to be reused in small and large scale tributes, including 7.5 tons for use in the navy battleshipUSS New York.

5. On September 13 a worker at the site, Frank Silecchia, discovered a 20-foot cross of two steel beams amongst the debris. The beams were dubbed the “Ground Zero Cross” and became a spiritual symbol for families of the victims and workers who cleaned up the debris.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Video: Michael Matheson Miller Discusses ‘Evangelii Gaudium’ on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report
Last night on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report,PovertyCuredirector and Acton Research Fellow Michael Matheson Miller joined host Lawrence Kudlow and Rusty Reno, Editor of First Things magazine, to discuss the position of the Roman Catholic Church on global capitalism in light of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation ‘Evangelii Gaudium.’ The video is embedded below. ...
Obamacare: Our President Has Built A National Rube Goldberg Machine
A Rube Goldberg machine, contraption, invention, device, or apparatus is a deliberately over-engineered or overdone machine that performs a very simple task in a plex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. When each of my five kids hit 5th grade, they had to build a Rube Goldberg machine. It had to include a pulley, a lever…each of the simple machines. Thankfully, my children have an engineer father. Had it been left up to me, they would have gone to school...
Acton Institute Participating in 2014 ‘Cure Our World’ Conference in Bangkok
The Acton Institute is co-sponsoring the ‘Cure Our World’ Conference, sponsored by the Catholic Business Executives Group (CBEG) for Christian business leaders. The conference will take place in Bangkok, March 20-22 of 2014. There will be many interesting speakers, including Acton president and co-founder, Rev. Robert A. Sirico. Read on for how to get the “early bird” discount. Here are seven reasons why you consider participating in this conference: To learn, meditate and inculcate the social teachings and wisdom of...
The Once Great City of Havana
I find the new investigative essay by journalist Michael J. Totten about Havana before and munism poignant and beautiful, a must-read for anyone interested in munism and the universal hunger for liberty. The long essay is worth every word, but I’ve excerpted a few of the most arresting passages here: The rotting surfaces of some of the buildings [in the tourist district] have been restored, but those changes are strictly cosmetic. Look around. There’s still nothing to buy. You’ll find...
Acton Institute Now Accepts Bitcoin Donations
Over the course of 2013 we’ve enabled new methods of giving including Dwolla and PayPal. Additionally, recurring monthly donations are now possible via PayPal and credit card. This week we’re introducing the ability to donate with Bitcoin, the popular digital currency. Learn more about Bitcoin at or by reading Joe Carter’s posts (part 1, part 2, and part 3) here at the PowerBlog. The option of donating anonymously with Bitcoin is also possible. Click here to donate to Acton with...
‘I Don’t Want To Beg! I’d Rather Work!’
Madison Root is an enterprising young lady. She knows braces are expensive, and wants to help pay for them. So, she went to her uncle’s farm, cut and bundled mistletoe and headed to the downtown Portland, Ore. market to sell it for the holiday season. And then she ran into the long arm of bureaucracy. …a security guard told her that she had to stop selling due to a city ordinance that bans such activity in a park “except as...
ACLU Sues U.S. Catholic Bishops Over Denial Of ‘Proper Health Care’
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed suit against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) regarding a case in a Muskegon, Mich. hospital. According to the ACLU, Tamesha Means was 18 weeks pregnant in December, 2010, when her water broke. A friend brought her to Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon. Ms. Means subsequently made two more trips to this hospital, and her baby, born prematurely, died. According to a New York Times piece, …Dr. Douglas W. Laube,...
The Luxury of Solar-Powered Simplicity
There is a kind of trendy “green” simplicity that is a luxury only paratively wealthy can afford, says Dylan Pahman in this week’s Acton Commentary. But there is a movement catching steam that might perfectly encapsulate a type of solar-powered simplicity: The tiny house movement is a recent trend in the United States for building and living in eco-friendly domiciles about half the average size of an apartment. Graham Hill, a tiny house architect, described his philosophy in the New...
Samuel Gregg: Free Market Economics And The Pope
Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium continues to stimulate conversation, especially in the arena of economics. According to Francis X. Rocca at the Catholic News Service, many are heralding the pope’s call for doing away with “an ‘economy of exclusion and inequality’ based on the ‘idolatry of money.'” Sam Gregg, Acton’s Director of Research, weighed in on the pope’s economic viewpoint. There’s plenty of evidence out there, from the World Bank for example, suggesting that the number of people in...
Climate Change, the Green Patriarch, and the Disposition of Fear
Today at First Things’ On the Square feature, I question the tone and timing of Patriarch Batholomew’s recent message on climate change. While I do not object to him making a statement about the subject in conjunction with the opening of the Warsaw Climate Change Conference, his initial reference, then silence, with regards to Typhoon Haiyan while other religious leaders offered their prayer, sympathy, and support to those affected, is disappointing. I write, While other religious leaders offered prayer and...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved