Iconic 9/11 survivor Marcy Borders dies of stomach cancer she blamed on ash from attack

REPORT - Almost everyone remembered her face, though they might not have known her name.

Aug 26, 2015

Almost everyone remembered her face, though they might not have known her name.

Marcy Borders became known as the “dust lady” when AFP photographer Stan Honda snapped a photograph of her as she was running for safety after the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, coated in dust and debris.

But on Monday, Borders succumbed to stomach cancer, which she believed was caused by the dust and debris that coated her in that famous picture.

“I definitely believe it because I haven’t had any illnesses,” she told NJ.com in November, a few months after she was diagnosed in August of 2014. “I don’t have high blood pressure… high cholesterol, diabetes.”

At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Borders had only been at her job for a month at Bank of America, and she was running late to work that day.

“I was picking the junk off the desk, getting ready to start my day,” she told The Daily Mail in 2011. “That was then the plane hit. That’s when the building started quaking and swaying. I lost all control, and I went into a frenzy. I fought my way out of that place.”

She recalled the scene as everyone tried to evacuate. “Hundreds of people were trying to get out. My stairwell was badly damaged and we had to move stairwells, I was convinced we were going to die. I’m so glad I had the strength to get to the bottom.”

But even outside, the terror did not stop.

“There were wounded and the injured, it was too much for one to witness. I saw people with things sticking out of them, covered head to toe in blood. I couldn’t understand it. What I saw was carnage, and I thought, ‘God, I’m going to die anyway.'”

Borders tried to run to safety, but the Army held her back because of the falling debris. Finally, a man grabbed her arm and led her to safety. It was not until later that she learned that someone had taken her picture during the escape.

The image would later go on to become one of Time Magazine’s “25 most powerful images.”