Daily Mirror chief reporter Andy Lines, who covered the 9/11 attacks in New York, has returned to Ground Zero 25 years later after being diagnosed with a rare incurable heart condition believed to be caused by toxic dust he breathed in while reporting from the streets of Manhattan in September 2001.
Lines, now registered as a 'responder' in the official World Trade Center Health Programme, said visiting the memorial felt very different this time. He paid his respects to victims he had reported on, including firefighter Gary Geidel, father-to-be Daniel Lee, and fire chaplain Mychal Judge.
A Diagnosis Linked to Toxic Dust
In March 2024, Lines fell ill with shortness of breath and was taken by ambulance to Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex. In A&E, doctors told his wife Lois they needed to "stop his heart" and use a defibrillator to restart it. He was defibrillated a second time the next day and taken to Bart's Hospital, where an implantable cardioverter defibrillator was inserted into his chest.
Doctors later discovered he had developed cardiac sarcoidosis, a rare incurable heart condition that can go undetected for years. After his diagnosis, he was enrolled in a special cardiac sarcoidosis programme at Bart's, run by Juan Carlos Quijano-Campos, with 120 patients being monitored.
Memories of the Day the World Changed
Lines wrote in his diary on 9/11: "Day the World Changed." At 8.40am on September 11 2001, he was dropping his two daughters, then aged six and seven, at school. Six minutes later, American Airlines Flight 11 smashed into the North Tower.
On September 12, he walked down to Ground Zero, where he found a passenger's boarding pass from a Boston to Los Angeles flight and a badly singed bank statement from a company based in the World Trade Center. He was offered a lift in a fire engine with blown-out windows, with the crew putting the sirens on as they drove through deserted streets.
Impact on His Community
In his hometown of Stamford, Connecticut, 10 people were killed. A neighbour's car remained in the local train station car park until November - he had gone to work in the WTC and never returned. One of his daughter's school friends' dads, covered in dust, walked 28 miles home in shock.
Michael Barasch, who runs a charitable foundation and is leading the fight for justice for 9/11 victims, told Lines: "The government lied to you. They lied to us. They said the air was safe to breathe. It wasn't." Barasch, who has skin and prostate cancer, said: "You breathed in that air. I breathed in that air."
9/11 activist John Feal, who organised for a memorial wall for responders to be built, told Lines: "Don't worry when you go - we'll get your name on that!"
