Chris Hawley wrote her name and her next-of-kin's phone number on her arm before she ever set foot on what recovery workers called “the pile.” Twenty-five years later, Hawley is a medicolegal death investigator for the Knox County Regional Forensic Center, but every September, she says, the memories of Ground Zero resurface.
Hawley was serving as a Kitsap County deputy coroner when she was dispatched to New York City to assist with victim identification and recovery after the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to WVLT. With commercial flights grounded nationwide, she drove across the country alone for four days to reach the scene. She was first assigned to Pier 92, working five days of intake for missing-person demographic information, before she was reassigned to Ground Zero itself.
“The mission changed from search and rescue to search and recovery,” Hawley said, per the station's report. She described conditions at the site in stark terms: toxic dust, underground fires, and heavy debris that workers moved by hand, five-gallon bucket by five-gallon bucket, in a manual brigade meant to avoid disturbing human remains. Subterranean heat was intense enough to melt the soles of responders' fire boots, and Hawley worked 12-hour shifts alongside a 12-person international recovery team in unstable wreckage and buried fires.
‘A Burning Tomb’
“It was a burning tomb,” Hawley said of the site, the same account notes. She spent six weeks sleeping in hotels and aboard the USNS Comfort during the deployment. Outside the perimeter gates, families gathered holding photographs, asking searchers to find their missing loved ones — a scene Hawley has carried with her since.
Information coordination was part of the response, according to the Center for Technology in Government. Hawley performed demographic intake work before her reassignment to the pile itself.
The Identification Effort Continues
The work Hawley helped begin in 2001 is still not finished. As of August 2026, New York City's Office of Chief Medical Examiner had positively identified 1,654 of the 2,753 victims who died at the World Trade Center, leaving 1,099 victims — roughly 40% of those killed — still unidentified, according to NYC.gov. Scientists have continued processing recovered fragments of human remains from Ground Zero, and city officials recently announced the first identification achieved through forensic investigative genetic genealogy, a technique that combines DNA profiling with genealogical research to generate leads when family reference DNA isn't available.
The toll of that recovery work has extended far beyond the physical debris cleared from Lower Manhattan by 2002. Recovery workers face lingering trauma, respiratory illnesses, and toxic-exposure cancers that have claimed hundreds of responders' lives in the decades since, and by September 2026 the total number of responders and survivors who died from toxic-exposure illnesses linked to Ground Zero officially exceeded the 2,976 people killed on the day of the attacks, per KQ2. This year's 25th anniversary commemoration at Ground Zero introduced a seventh moment of silence specifically to honor responders and survivors who died from post-9/11 exposure illnesses, joining six moments that have long marked the plane strikes and building collapses.
A Nationwide Health Crisis
The scale of that crisis now stretches across the entire country. Active enrollment in the federal World Trade Center Health Program reached 145,275 members as of June 30, 2026, according to the International Fire & Safety Journal. More than 57,000 responders and survivors nationwide have had at least one cancer certified as a World Trade Center-related condition. The FBI, which ran its PENTTBOM investigation as the largest case in federal law enforcement history, reported that more than 4,000 special agents and 3,000 professional employees were involved in the recovery and investigation, per the FBI.
Hawley herself undergoes regular pulmonary checkups to monitor her lung health from the toxic dust, and she says PTSD from her time at Ground Zero re-emerges every September. She relocated to East Tennessee eight years ago and now practices at a small farm in Morgan County, where she tends horses, goats, and miniature donkeys between her shifts investigating unexpected deaths across Knox, Anderson, and Blount counties.
A Growing Caseload Back Home
Hawley's current role sits inside an operation that has expanded dramatically to meet rising demand. The Knox County Regional Forensic Center was scheduled to break ground in April 2025, with $20 million approved for the project, as Hoodline reported. Annual case volume at the center climbed from roughly 1,900 cases in 2019 to nearly 3,000 cases in the previous year, while the center's staff expanded to 43 forensic professionals.
Hawley urges younger generations to learn 9/11 history and remember those who died, according to WVLT's account. For responders still carrying the physical and emotional weight of that response, the SAMHSA National Helpline offers 24/7 support for emergency responders and people coping with PTSD at 1-800-662-4357.
