Alison Thompson was 62 years old when she sat down this year to recall how she rollerbladed into Ground Zero with medical supplies.
Thompson, now a Coconut Grove resident, told her story to the Miami Herald, describing how she signed up with the American Red Cross and spent the first six days after the attacks searching for survivors and washing firefighters' eyes clear of the toxic dust that blanketed lower Manhattan. She spent time amid the wreckage at Ground Zero and would go on to lose 64 friends in the attacks.
She stayed on at Ground Zero for nine months, aiding rescue workers until cleanup operations finally closed on May 30, 2002. The experience has stayed with her all these years. “We all just have to step up and do something,” Thompson said.
From a Paramedic's Instinct to a Global Volunteer Network
Thompson has a paramedic background, and that instinct for triage never left her after 2001. Her experience on 9/11 inspired her to found Third Wave Volunteers, the nonprofit that has become her full-time, unpaid job — she has not taken a salary in 25 years, according to the Herald. Third Wave has since responded to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, deployments that placed Thompson and thousands of other volunteers on the ground across the country and around the world wherever disaster struck.
Those early deployments left a lasting mark. Following her work in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami, Thompson helped oversee construction of the country's first Tsunami Early Warning System and a community education center, according to DailyGood. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she co-managed an internally displaced persons camp in Port-au-Prince housing 75,000 people with Sean Penn and 10 doctors, and later served as an ambassador to the Haitian Ministry of Environment, according to Third Wave Volunteers' own board biography.
Her post-disaster volunteer work became the subject of a 2008 documentary, The Third Wave, which Sean Penn and Bono screened at the Cannes Film Festival, and she followed it with a 2011 memoir published by Random House, per Wikipedia. The recognition has continued into the present: in November 2025, Thompson was named the 2026 New South Wales Australian of the Year, an honor that credited her quarter-century of humanitarian work launched at Ground Zero, according to The Australian Women's Weekly. She also received the Presidential Lifetime Service Award, including one presented by President Joe Biden in 2022, according to the Herald.
A Network Built Without Paid Staff
What began with a single first aid station has grown into something far larger. Third Wave Volunteers now counts more than 30,000 volunteer first responders, according to Forbes, and has delivered aid to more than 18 million people. The organization relies on grassroots volunteer labor.
The nonprofit's footprint touches Thompson's own backyard in South Florida. Following Hurricane Irma in September 2017, she co-founded the first Community Emergency Operations Center in North Miami, a 12,000-square-foot warehouse headquarters that coordinated grassroots disaster response across 160 local Florida organizations, according to the Miami New Times. The Herald reports that Third Wave has also responded to hurricanes and wildfires.
Through the years, the group has developed practical, low-tech tools for survivors left without power. Third Wave has distributed more than 100,000 solar-powered lights to disaster survivors, including in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, according to Aventura Magazine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Thompson launched the Women in White Masks campaign, delivering more than 2 million N95 masks to healthcare providers and vulnerable facilities in all 50 states, per APB Speakers.
From Manhattan Streets to the Front Lines in Ukraine
Thompson's volunteer network has followed conflict as well as natural disaster. She and other Third Wave volunteers have trained Ukrainian soldiers and provided food and supplies to troops while working on the front line of the Russia-Ukraine war, according to the Herald.
Climate-driven disasters and repeated crises have deepened the demand for the kind of grassroots response she built after 9/11. Thompson has emphasized love and service.
The Health Toll of Ground Zero Endures
Twenty-five years after the towers fell, the health consequences of toxic dust remain part of the legacy of 9/11.
The need remains substantial. Responders and survivors continue to seek care for certified WTC conditions tied to their exposure at Ground Zero. For Thompson, the anniversary each September serves as a reminder of what is important in life and what people can accomplish when they come together, as she put it to the Herald.
