9/11 Survivor Marcy Borders Dies of Cancer

You have probably seen the photo of Marcy Borders before. The iconic image of the woman who survived the 9/11 attacks turned out to be one of the most symbolic. That day she was working on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center at Bank of America when the first plane hit construction.

Marcy, who was in the north tower, managed to escape the stairs until she reached the emergency exit of the south tower. In 2011, ten years after the incident, she told the New York Post that she was seeing nothing in front of her at the time and was saved by a stranger who put her safely in a nearby building.

The image was taken by AFP photographer Stan Honda, who was near the World Trade Center at the time of the attack. About Marcy, he said: “A woman arrived completely covered in gray dust. You could tell she was dressed smartly for work and for a second walked through the lobby. I took a picture of it before a police officer started directing people toward a set of stairs, ”said Honda.

According to the Telegraph newspaper, Marcy kept the clothes she wore on the day of the bombing, which were covered in dust, in a plastic bag inside her wardrobe, never having looked at the pieces again.

The aftermath of the attack was drastic in the life of Marcy, who developed depression and had substance abuse problems - she had to go to a rehab clinic in 2011. Unfortunately, Marcy also had stomach cancer, diagnosed last year when I was 41 years old. The disease ended up being responsible for his death, which was announced last Monday (24).

In an interview with the Jersey Journal, she said she believed cancer could be related to the attacks - in May this year, the number of cancer cases related to the tragedy was over 4, 000. Among the most common types of the disease are skin and prostate cancer.