Charles S. Hirsch, MD, who served as New York City chief medical examiner during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, died Friday at age 79 from complications of multiple illnesses, according to an obituary in The New York Times.
Dr. Hirsch was the city's chief medical examiner from 1989 to 2013. During his tenure he worked on many high-profile cases, including the 1993 death of White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster Jr., the death of 29-year-old security guard Anthony Baez who was asphyxiated in police custody, and the 2006 death of police detective James Zadroga, whose case spurred a law to secure health benefits for 9/11 first responders, according to the report.
However, Dr. Hirsch is best known for his service to the city and the nation following the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center. After the planes hit, he rushed to Ground Zero with six aides to set up a temporary morgue, but when the North Tower fell, he broke all his ribs and two aides were severely injured, according to the report. Upon his return to the examiner's headquarters, he was covered in the soot of crumbled concrete.
"If reinforced concrete was rendered into dust, then it wasn't much of a mystery as to what would happen to people," he said in a 2002 interview with The New York Times. Dr. Hirsch kept a handful of this dust on his desk in a glass bowl, according to the report.
Dr. Hirsch privately hoped to identify about 2,000 of those lost in the attack. When he retired in 2013, he had identified 1,634 of the 2,753 people killed, according to the report.
Dr. Hirsch was a Chicago native known for his diligence, independence and utmost respect to every citizen he came into contact with, according to the report. His motto was "That the nobility of the chief medical examiner comes from service to the anonymous citizens of New York City at the worst times of their lives," Barbara Sampson, MD, current chief medical examiner and former deputy to Dr. Hirsch, said at his retirement in 2013, according to the report.
Dr. Hirsch's wife Marie-Claude Fenart died before him, but he is survived by his daughter and two grandsons, according to the report.
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