City of Dust

12. Assaulting uncertainty

New York City was slowly being blinded by a habitual opacity about the aftermath of 9/11 and ground zero that blurred images and hid some things in plain sight. After the Zadroga flare-up, many New Yorkers shared Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s conclusion that Charles Hirsch should never have been in the position of determining who was a victim of the September 11 attacks. They looked askance at his decision to contradict James Zadroga’s autopsy and to draw a seemingly arbitrary deadline around James Godbee’s death, usually overlooking the fact that Hirsch also had agreed to add Felicia Dunn-Jones’s name to the list of victims. His strict adherence to science and logic counted for little; the denigration of belief that began ...