The Dust At Ground Zero

In her first appearance on 60 Minutes, Katie Couric reports how the dust at Ground Zero affected first responders.

In all there were about 40,000 people who worked on the pile — a collection of firefighters, policemen, construction and utility workers. One of them was 30-year-old New York City Police Det. James Zadroga. When the planes hit the World Trade Center, he drove straight to ground zero and stayed for weeks. His father, Joseph Zadroga, says he remembers that shortly after that his son started getting sick.

"Every morning he would wake up and he said he would be coughing and hacking, and this black stuff would come up out of his lungs," Det. Zadroga's father remembers. "And he just didn't know what was happening to him. He couldn't figure out what was happening to him."

If you missed it, you can read the story and watch the video clips at the 60 Minutes website, including an interview with Christine Todd Whitman, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Five years later, Ground Zero is "The Hole in the City's Heart" described in great detail in a 24 page feature article in today's New York Times.