The New York City Fire Department has lost dozens of members this past year to diseases related to rescue-and-recovery work after Sept. 11, 2001, pushing the department over a grim threshold: More FDNY responders have now died from 9/11-related diseases than were killed on the day of the attack.
“Our list of heroes grows each year,” said FDNY Acting Chief John Esposito at a solemn ceremony Wednesday during which 32 of the most recent deaths were added to the FDNY World Trade Center Memorial Wall.
On Sept. 11, 2001, 343 FDNY responders were killed, many as they rushed into burning, collapsing skyscrapers to try to save lives. Since that day, 363 more have died of illnesses related to the toxic work of digging through rubble looking for survivors and recovering the deceased, including fellow firefighters, according to the FDNY.
“Those insurmountable losses did not end at the World Trade Center site,” said Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker at the ceremony at FDNY Headquarters in Brooklyn. “Instead we’ve seen our members become sick because of time they spent working in rescue-and-recovery. We have seen more than 360 members die because of their bravery and selflessness.”
The names of the deceased were added to the memorial one at a time, with a ring of a bell, a recitation of the date of death and a loved one’s placement of a white flower at the foot of the wall. The dead included firefighters, paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians, plus one chaplain and one electrician.
There were 352 chemical agents identified in the Ground Zero dust, according to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. As a result, FDNY Chief Medical Officer David Prezant said responders have suffered from a range of ailments, with cancer and respiratory diseases claiming the most lives. As of early this year, he said, more than 500 of the agency’s 9/11 responders had severe respiratory disease and more than 2,600 had cancer, including 900 with prostate cancer.
Those who have been designated as having 9/11-related diseases have had their conditions certified by the federal government as being related to their exposure on Sept. 11 and in the months that followed. Prezant said 15,500 FDNY members showed up at Ground Zero at some point through the summer of 2002.
“Many worked there for more than 30 days,” Prezant told Gothamist. “This was an attempt to rescue our own, to recover our own; to rescue others, to recover others; to get back to normal.”
New York’s senators and congressional representatives recently introduced a bill to ensure stable funding for the federal World Trade Center Health Program, which provides no-cost care for certified health conditions suffered by more than 125,000 9/11 responders and survivors at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa.
Prezant has treated many FDNY members sick with such illnesses, and he said “each and every one of them always say they will do it over again … because that’s who they are.”