WSMV Channel 4 Nashville man says wife died from 9/11 Ground Zero illness

Nashville man says wife died from 9/11 Ground Zero illness

Nearly 2,800 people died in the World Trade Center attacks. And many who managed to escape that day, only to battle illness down the road, believe it's connected to their exposure at Ground Zero.

One Nashville man says his wife is among those 9/11 forgotten victims.

SPECIAL SECTION: 9/11 Ten Years Later

Laura Acord worked on the 10th floor of the North Tower at the World Trade Center and was out on the street, standing and gazing toward the sky on Sept. 11, 2001.

"She's standing there and she heard the second plane coming," Matt Acord said.

She saw the second plane hit the South Tower.

"She said she remembers the heat and the big ball of fire," he said.

Laura Acord survived that terrifying attack on American soil.

A couple years later she met Matt, and although on the surface they were complete opposites, Laura was a city gal from New York and Matt was a cowboy from Tennessee.

They quickly fell in love and got married.

Three years after 9/11, Laura started having health problems.

"Well at first they thought it was pneumonia. She couldn't breathe and her oxygen level had dropped really low," Matt Acord said.

Doctors treated Laura Acord, but she kept having trouble breathing. She was later diagnosed with a rare lung disease called pulmonary vasculitis.

"Which is basically where her body would attack her own lungs. They would start hemmoraging and she couldn't process oxygen well enough," Matt Acord said. "She'd get better. For a long time, she was either in the hospital or she was ok."

This went on for months, until Laura Acord died in February.

She was 46 years old.

What she survived 10 years ago, her husband believes finally killed her. Although doctors could never really pinpoint what caused Laura Acord's lung problems, Matt Acord believes strongly that her disease was caused by flying debris and toxic pollutants that she breathed in that September day while standing outside on the street by the World Trade Center.

"I wonder, even, people who weren't even in the building, because they had that cloud of smoke for weeks afterwards. If somebody just lived around there, I don't see how they couldn't have been affected by it," he said.

Despite having insurance, the couple racked up $100,000 in medical bills that Matt Acord, who drives a truck for a living, doesn't know how he'll ever pay.

Laura Acord's breathing difficulties first started in 2005 - two years after the deadline for applying for the original 911 Victims Compensation Fund.

So now, Matt Acord's only hope for help with the bills is a new $2.7 billion fund, that as a spouse, he could be eligible for.

That fund becomes operational Oct. 1.

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