From Adweek · Mark Mwachiro · · 2m
The 9/11 story that never stopped hurting
Fox News reporter Eric Shawn covered Ground Zero for a month, and 25 years later the dust is still billing him.
In brief
Fox News reporter Eric Shawn covered Ground Zero for a month, and 25 years later the dust is still billing him. The 9/11 casualty list is still growing: 50,000 people now carry illnesses traced to that dust, and Shawn says he would go back anyway. Originally reported by Adweek.
He heard it before he saw it
Shawn was walking to work from the Upper East Side on September 11 when a plane roared overhead, engines pushing hard. It was flying far too low.
“The engines were going faster with more thrust, and I looked up, and I thought, 'Holy sh*t. He's low.'”
A primary day crew filled him in
Outside a local candidate's headquarters, TV crews told him a plane had hit one of the towers. He saw the smoke on their monitor and ran for the Fox News office.
On air, out of breath
He confirmed the aircraft type to the assignment desk, then went on beside anchor John Scott to describe what he had just watched pass over his head.
“I was out of breath.”
He named the culprit early
Before the second plane hit, Shawn was sure it was bin Laden and al-Qaeda. He had covered the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 landmark plot.
A month of overnight shifts
Assigned to Ground Zero for 12-hour overnights, he stayed on the story for roughly a month, breathing the site the whole time.
The cough that never left
By November he had an uncontrollable cough. His doctor called it World Trade Center cough. It turned out to be chronic acute bronchitis, and it stayed.
“It didn't go away.”
Fine on camera, wrecked off it
He could hold a live hit together, then cough uncontrollably the second the report cut to a soundbite, and be steady again when it came back to him.
Reflux, then cancer
Reflux he recovered from. Every marker for asthma without asthma. Then rising PSA levels, a PI-RADS 5 result, skin cancer, and checkups every three months.
Fifty thousand people, still counting
Shawn says he is not the story. Roughly 50,000 people carry 9/11-related illness, and he would still have climbed the stairs to report it.
“People are dying from al-Qaeda today, quietly in their bedrooms, quietly in hospital beds.”
What matters most
The 9/11 casualty list is still growing: 50,000 people now carry illnesses traced to that dust, and Shawn says he would go back anyway.
