By Steve Neavling
As a special FBI agent following the Sept. 11, 2011, terrorist attacks, Lauren Schuler spent five days combing through the debris at the Pentagon, where American Airlines Flight 77 crashed, killing 64 people aboard and another 125 in the building.
Now, Schuler tells New Castle News, she’s paying the price for being exposed to toxic health hazards during the 9/11 recovery.
About 15 years after the search, Schuler was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a dangerous type of blood cancer that forced her to get a kidney transplant.
The FBI says 18 of its employees – 16 special agents, a supervisory investigative specialist, and an electronics technician – have died “while helping evacuate victims from the Twin Towers, or by the significant health issues brought on by the immediate and sustained work they performed at each of the crash sites.”
“While I would never minimize what happened on that day, the way people were killed so heartlessly by those terrorists, I just have to say that the number of people who have died since is many more,” Schuler said. “I don’t want those people to be forgotten. I don’t want the 18 employees of the FBI who died from their illnesses to be forgotten.”
