9/11 RESCUE WORKERS DEMAND JUSTICE
FOR THEIR ILLS, DOLLARS FOR HEALTH CARE

Money isn’t everything for Scott Aline, a member of Operating Engineers Local 138 in New York who spent months cleaning up the toxic remains of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 terrorist attacks 6-1/2 years ago.

But it might have helped save his health and his house and prevent the pain he and his fiancée, Lee Abramowski, suffered when they had to give up their daughter for adoption because they couldn’t afford to care for her.

But it might have helped save his health and his house and prevent the pain he and his fiancée, Lee Abramowski, suffered when they had to give up their daughter for adoption because they couldn’t afford to care for her.

Aline and other workers on what was known--after the Twin Towers collapsed--as “The Pile” feel forgotten by the GOP Bush regime. So, with colleagues from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, and with an AFL-CIO support letter, several hundred descended on Washington on Feb. 26 to tell their tales and seek more aid, especially for health care. They have good reason to do so.

After the attacks, up to 50,000 workers--including police, New York Fire Fighters, and unionized construction workers from all around the U.S.--took turns digging into the Trade Center ruins or working on the debris hauled to the Staten Island landfill.

In doing so, they were exposed to the toxic fumes from the burning Trade Center, millions of tons of particulates--some of which lodged in their lungs--and horrible strain and stress from the constant search for the bodies of victims or fellow Fire Fighters. And now those rescue workers are getting sick, with silicosis, bronchitis, pneumonia, lung cancer, cancerous polyps, leukemia, and other physical ills, plus post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Their families are affected, too.

Many rescue workers have been forced to retire on disability. Some Fire Fighters have died. Others--both IAFF members and others--are slowly expiring.

The federal government’s response? A program, run through five medical clinics in New York City and another in New Jersey, to diagnose and treat ailments caused by the collapse. But Bush wants only $25 million for the clinics in the year starting Oct. 1, the same as he sought last year. And he doesn’t want a permanent program.

Congress, led by the New York delegation, responded last year by voting for $160 million. But even that won’t cover all the rescue workers, or their families, or what happened to them, speakers said on Feb. 26 before heading off to lobby lawmakers. The city estimates annual needs to cover workers’ health costs at $250 million.

Aline and Abramowski are typical. He’s sick with pulmonary disease from working on “The Pile.” Says Aline: “My lungs are 70 years old, the doctors say. I’m 46.”

Aline also has post-traumatic stress disorder from the strain of trying to find survivors, or their body parts, of the 3,000 people murdered in the attacks. So does Abramowski--from trying to care for him. “It’s borderline insanity,” she says of PTSD.

And since Aline is disabled now, they didn’t have enough income to keep their house, or their daughter. Aline used to earn $2,700 a month. Now he gets Social Security disability checks of $1,100 monthly. She also works. The couple now live in a rented apartment. They had to give the child up for adoption. “We have to ask people for food, fuel, clothing, basic needs,” Abramowski adds.

Lawmakers at the rally, led by Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney (both D-N.Y.) and Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), pledged their support for making programs to provide health care to the rescue workers and their families permanent--and to reopen the trust fund for 9/11 victims’ families so the rescue workers could seek money there, too. Both ideas are in Maloney’s bill, named for rescue worker James Zadroga.

“We have an administration who can cite 9/11 to spend billions on a war” in Iraq “but you haven’t heard a word from them about spending millions for those who responded” to 9/11, Kucinich said.

Nadler said there have been two cover-ups. The first was perpetrated by Bush’s White House and then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R), who both said “The Pile” was safe to work at without protective breathing gear. The second was an attempt to cover up the extent of the illnesses among the rescue workers, he added.

“This is a deliberate further betrayal of the heroes of 9/11,” said Nadler, whose congressional district includes the Twin Towers site.

But if Congress doesn’t come through with money for them, and in particular if individual lawmakers vote against compensation for the rescue workers, they’ll face problems at the polls, speakers said. That’s because workers, especially union workers, came from all over the U.S. to help the rescue-and-recovery effort.

“If the politicians didn’t help us, we won’t help them. We knocked out Rudy” (Giuliani) from the GOP presidential race, said retired New York Fire Department Deputy Chief Jim Riches, an IAFF member who lost his son when the Trade Center collapsed, killing 343 Fire Fighters and their priest among the 3,000 dead.

“Some of our pols have a very short memory, but we’re going to remind them,” Riches declared.