Sept. 11 responder gets help at University Community Hospital

Sept. 11 responder gets help at University Community Hospital
Tampabay.com - St. Petersburg,FL,USA

By Alexandra Zayas, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Wednesday, March 11, 2009
TAMPA — The Bronx cop was watching the morning news when United Airlines flight 175 exploded into the second tower of the World Trade Center.

"I have to go," Ivan Castrillo told his wife.

The police van headed into ground zero. The tower had just collapsed. Papers rained from the sky. Survivors wandered, dazed.

"It's like you left a city as you knew it," Castrillo remembers, "and entered a different world."

An eerie quiet blanketed lower Manhattan, along with a blizzard of grey ash — a cocktail of cement dust, glass fibers, asbestos, pesticides, lead and other dangerous material.

Castrillo breathed it in.

So did more than 91,000 others. In 2001, they had no idea of what it would do to their bodies.

A Tampa Bay area hospital is now part of a national effort to assess and treat the damage.
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