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“There was a huge roar like a train, and I saw large clouds of smoke and dust rising between the buildings,” Honda said a few years after the terrorist attack.
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He quickly ran into the lobby of a building where police gathered people to save them from danger.
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“A woman came in, completely covered in dust. She could be seen that she was well dressed. She stayed there for a second, and before the police started moving people up the stairs, I managed to take one photo,” Honda recalled in 2011.
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The woman’s name was Mersey Borders, and she had recently started working for the American Bank, located in the World Trade Center. She was 28 at the time, and her photo, distributed worldwide by AFP, became one of the most iconic scenes of the gloomy day. The image and Borders itself eventually got the nickname Dust Lady.
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PHOTO: AFP / Scanpix
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After the terrorist attack, Borders plunged into deep depression and began using drugs, but eventually, as she herself said, “found peace” after rehabilitation and the death of Osama bin Laden. However, in August 2014, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
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Borders died in 2015 at the age of 42.
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“My mother fought a great fight. She is not only a ‘dust lady’ but also my heroine and will always live in me,” Noelle Borders told the New York Post.
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At the time, Borders’ cousin, John Borders, wrote on Facebook that Borders had succumbed to an illness that had taken over him since September 11, 2001.
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When she was diagnosed with cancer, John wondered if it could be related to a terrorist attack.
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“I asked myself, didn’t this thing burn cancer cells in me? I definitely believe it because I’ve never had anything. I don’t have high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes. How can a perfectly healthy person wake up with cancer the next day?” a year before her death, she told the Jersey Journal.
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Some types of cancer are among the diseases covered by the 9/11 compensation fund, but it is still unclear whether there is a link between cancer and post-terrorist dust.
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In 2014, just a month after Borders was diagnosed with cancer, three firefighters died in one day in response to a 9/11 call. They all had cancer.
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“While we honor and commemorate these men, it is a reminder that even after 13 years, the effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on human health have not ended and will continue for many years to come,” New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said in a statement.
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In 2015, photographer Honda told The Washington Post that he had not contacted Borders after meeting him shortly after the terrorist attacks.
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“I am very sad to hear about Mersey’s death. She had a harsh life,” Honda wrote.
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In 2011, for the Telegraph, Borders revealed that she still kept the clothes she was wearing when the photo was taken. It is still unwashed, all covered with Twin Towers dust.
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