9/11 Stories: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy

On September 11th, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy was a civilian, employed by Goldman Sachs, with offices just 500 yards away from The World Trade Center. Murphy was flying to London on September 10th for some business meetings the next day, but with his flight delayed by strong thunderstorms, he arrived on the morning of September 11, with just enough time to quickly shower and get to his meetings. When Murphy walked onto the London trading floor, he saw everyone gathered around tv screens, watching the horror unfold in New York City. Phil Murphy and his wife were living in Middletown, New Jersey, which lost more than 30 residents that day. His own immediate family was safe. Charlie, the youngest of Phil and Tammy Murphy’s four children, had just been born. Phil rushed home as soon as he could, arriving Saturday, and remembers going back to work by the ruins of The World Trade Center the next day, or Monday at the latest, less than a week after the terror attack collapsed the towers. A fire now burned at the 14.6-acre site, dubbed Ground Zero...a fire which burned for three months. Murphy says the air was thick – that there was a smell in the air for even longer than the fire burned. One of Murphy’s New Jersey Gubernatorial predecessors, Christie Todd Whitman, was then the Director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. One week after 9/11, EPA Director Whitman declared the air was safe. It was not. Thousands have since been sickened and killed by the 9/11 dust. 9/11 didn’t end on 9/11.


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