24 years later, 9/11 will be commemorated in ceremonies at the World Trade Center footprint and on Long Island

Bells will toll in memoriam. Crowds will gather at ceremonies. Names of the dead will be recited one by one.

Nearly a quarter century after almost 3,000 people died when terrorist-hijacked jetliners were crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, a region, a nation and the world will mark another anniversary of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

Even as memories fade and the date itself recedes into the past, more and more first responders and others who lived, worked or studied near the rubble in the months after are getting sick and dying from the airborne toxins unleashed by the explosions.

In New York City, Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to attend the nation’s main 9/11-remembrance ceremony — at the World Trade Center footprint. 

On Long Island, names of those who died from toxin-caused ailments, or on the day of the attacks, are being unveiled at memorial walls in Westbury and Nesconset. There are nearly three dozen Long Island ceremonies throughout the day, from Point Lookout to Islip and Huntington to Riverhead and numerous communities in parks, at churches, outside town and village halls, by volunteer fire departments, on beaches and in prayer.

All will be commemorating the attacks and those killed, injured and left sickened by the attacks, carried out by Islamic extremists who were aggrieved by American involvement in the Middle East, support for Israel and killings of Palestinians.

The 9/11 attacks catalyzed American wars — in Afghanistan and in Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands — limits on civil liberties, more intrusive airport security, an expansion of torture and an indefinite war on terror.

At the World Trade Center, 2,753 victims were killed, and nearly 1 in 5 were Long Islanders — about two-thirds from Nassau County, the rest from Suffolk.

At this year's main ceremony — the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum, at Ground Zero — the names to be read are of those killed in attacks at the World Trade Center site, the Pentagon, aboard Flight 93 and on Feb. 26, 1993, the first time the towers were bombed.

John Feal, who runs the nonprofit FealGood Foundation, which advocates for first responders, will soon unveil yet more names — 362  others who have died — to the 9/11 Responders Remembered Memorial Park, a wall of granite in Nesconset.

"We’ve never done that many," Feal said. "That’s how many."

Combined with advancing age — the average first responder age on 9/11 was 38; now it’s 62, Feal said — the ailments caused by the Ground Zero toxins are exacerbated as the person gets older.

"These illnesses are catching up to these men and women, uniformed and nonuniformed, because of age," said Feal, who lost half his left foot while working to clear rubble from Ground Zero.

FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito noted in remarks at a department memorial earlier in the week that the death toll continues to mount, in addition to the 343 FDNY personnel killed the day of the attacks.

"The tragedy of that day has not and does not end," he said.

Feal lamented the clarion call to never forget 9/11 — or the responders who worked afterward to clear the rubble, search for survivors and remains — has not been heeded as terminally ill survivors are consigned to begging Congress to fully fund health programs for 9/11 victims.

"We’ve been at it all year. We’ll be back in a couple weeks to D.C.," he said. "And we’re gonna get a bill passed by the end of this year."

In the hours after the attacks, Michael O’Connell, a retired FDNY lieutenant from Huntington, was in a repurposed city bus, being transported to be deployed and coming down the West Side Highway, when the towers collapsed.

"It was total devastation. It was a huge hole in the middle of Manhattan," he said. "It was flying debris, paper everywhere, fire, smoke, a horrible smell."

Once at the pile, he heard the screech of hundreds of firefighter alarms — the equipment a firefighter wears that sounds if he is motionless for an extended period — that were alerting from beneath the wreckage, said O’Connell, now 49.

O’Connell, who was diagnosed in 2007 with sarcoidosis, a chronic inflammatory ailment that attacks his joints and skin, retired in 2010.

On Thursday, he’ll be at his old firehouse, in Ozone Park, attending a 9/11 memorial Mass, remembering Ray York, the firefighter who died on 9/11 from the firehouse, as well as two who died from 9/11 cancer, and making a pilgrimage to Ground Zero.

"It’s part of my life. I have my family, the people I love, and 9/11. It’s just something that’s in me," O’Connell said. "Every day I live it. It’s a day that I get to go pay homage and pay respect to those that we lost — and continue to lose."

Earlier this week, he lobbied Congress.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.