Tired...
Fealgood Foundation & NYCFFBH 9/11 Health Rally D.C. 11/09
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The Fealgood Foundation and The NYC Firefighters Brotherhood Foundation traveled to The Capitol in Washington to hold a rally in favor of passing HR847 and S1334, The James Zadroga 9/11 Health Care Act. Many Representatives and Senators spoke, and the responders and their families visited congressional offices afterwards.
Tired...
Fealgood Foundation Christmas Message To President Obama
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At their annual Christmas party, The Fealgood Foundation appealed to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to pass HR847, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health Act, and to President Barack Obama to sign it.
Tired...
Lung transplant behind him, chaplain blames 9/11
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/loc...cc4c03286.html
Monday, December 21, 2009 9:00 pm
When the call came, the Rev. Tom Winslow did not hesitate.
Terrorists had destroyed the World Trade Center, and rescue workers needed the spiritual support of clergy.
So for one week in November of 2001, Winslow, an Episcopal priest and the chaplain for the Wisconsin FBI, ministered to rescue workers in an area of ground zero dubbed “the pit.”
Winslow was one of many clergy attached to federal agencies who rotated through ground zero. He remembers praying over a rib cage, the only body part left of one victim.
Now, eight years later, Winslow thinks the toxic air he breathed that week led to a life-threatening health crisis. He received a lung transplant at UW Hospital three weeks ago and was back Monday for his first clinic visit.
“There are a lot of people out there who are still victims of 9/11, and they are going to be showing up in a wave at hospitals in the years ahead,” said Winslow, 65, of Pewaukee.
At ground zero, he wore an air-purifying canister respirator at all times around his neck, he said. However, he breathed through it only when he traveled below ground, the common practice of those at the site, he said.
A 2009 report by the World Trade Center Medical Working Group says thousands of exposed people continue to suffer from chronic mental and physical health conditions but that a relationship between exposure and more serious illnesses such as cancer is unknown.
Winslow said he had no lung problems until after his work at ground zero, then suffered an asthma-like attack within a week or so. Serious sinus and bronchial problems developed, leading to pneumonia, gastric reflux disease, and, ultimately, lung failure.
Winslow said he has filed a workers’ compensation claim against the government but anticipates taking no other legal action. The government’s position, Winslow said, is that he can’t prove his lung problems are not a result of a pack-a-day smoking habit he maintained for 26 years prior to quitting in 1986.
Dr. Keith Meyer, medical director of lung transplantation at UW Hospital, said that despite the proximity of Winslow’s respiratory problems with his time at ground zero, “whether it had anything to do with it is nothing we could ever prove.”
Winslow, a longtime proponent of organ donation, now wears a “Donate Life” pin on his collar. Even given what he’s been through, he would answer the call again, he said, although, in hindsight, he would take more health precautions.
He professes not to be angry about what happened to him, just sad at times.
“I certainly haven’t suffered as much as Christ did, and I was just doing what he asked me to do,” he said.
Tired...
9/11 Heroes In Life-Struggle As Obama Signs Multi-Billion War Bill
(Gold9472: I hooked up Marina and John, so this is very cool.)
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President Obamas plan to pump more than six hundred billion dollars into U.S. defense next year has outraged many Americans. Rescuers whose health suffered after working at Ground Zero say the government should pay for their medical care - not pour more money into war.
Tired...
Hero 9/11 first responder Jim Ryan dies of pancreatic cancer on Christmas Day
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009...of_cancer.html
BY Michael Mcauliff and Oren Yaniv
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, December 26th 2009, 4:00 AM
Sept. 11 first responder Jim Ryan did not make it through Christmas.
The former firefighter who spent months in the toxic rubble of Ground Zero succumbed to pancreatic cancer two hours into Christmas Day, his family said.
"He was just really really great," his widow, Magda, said last night.
The 48-year-old father of three, from Kings Park, L.I., was diagnosed with the disease in April 2006 and relapsed over a year ago.
The FDNY agreed that his cancer was 9/11-related.
He grew too sick to join a group who traveled to Capitol Hill last month to advocate passage of the Zadroga Act that would allocate $11 billion for those sickened on Sept. 11. The bill has been stalled amid health-care reform legislation.
"It's about all the guys who are going to come after me," Ryan told the Daily News then, "and there's going to be plenty of them."
Magda Ryan said her husband woke up Christmas Eve in good spirits, but his condition deteriorated and at 2 a.m., his 17-year-old son noticed that he wasn't breathing.
"We just wanted to stay home, we just hung out as a family," she said of how they spent this heartbreaking holiday. "We had our moments, some very very hard."
But they tried to recognize Christmas amid the grief. "Eventually," she said, "we even opened some presents."
Tired...
Death of 9/11 firefighter hero Jim Ryan overshadowed by 'flashier' Flight 253 terrorism story
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009..._bill_to_.html
BY Michael Mcauliff
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, December 27th 2009, 4:00 AM
They didn't find that out until early Christmas morning 2009, eight years later, when the firefighter's lungs finally overfilled with fluids, the side-effects of pancreatic cancer inflicted on him by the toxic dust he swallowed in hundreds of hours at Ground Zero.
Ryan answered the call of duty on 9/11, then went beyond, returning to the blasted ground for months. First, he hunted survivors, then victims, then just fragments of people - his FDNY brothers among them - whose lives and bodies were shattered that day.
He didn't realize how his own life was being shattered. Officials said the air was safe. He got cancer in 2006 that the Fire Department said came from the poison rubble. He beat it once. He couldn't beat it a second time, as a 48-year-old father of three.
On Christmas Eve, he tried to be himself, optimistic, helping with the morning dishes in his Kings Park, L.I., home as if he were not dying. By then, though, he had been off his cancer treatments since November because they no longer worked.
"That's just the way he is," his wife, Magda, said Christmas night, hours after her husband lost his final struggle.
That's the way most real heroes are, but there were no national headlines the next day mourning a hero firefighter's death, the way there were on Sept. 12, 2001, when 343 of Ryan's brethren met their ends.
The news yesterday was instead full of a botched airline terror attempt.
According to the reports, a young Nigerian man on a plane landing in Detroit had attempted to set ablaze chemicals taped to his leg. He burned himself, and achieved an effect like popping firecrackers before a passenger tackled him.
A flash and some smoke and some fear, and the whole world cared.
The suspected terrorist failed. He killed no one, unlike the monsters of 9/11, whose grim tally keeps climbing. Now including James Ryan.
He is a victim of the same killers who slammed the planes into the twin towers, the same killers who may be behind the Detroit flameout.
Yet for him, and for other recent 9/11 casualties like the NYPD's James Zadroga and the FDNY's John McNamara, our attention and care is selective. They didn't die amid the first flash and fire and fear, and are not being treated the same. Their families are not getting the help their predecessors in death got.
There is an answer. There is an attempt to make our nation care - a bill in Congress named after Zadroga that would spend $11 billion over 30 years to help Magda Ryan support her children as a single mother, and help thousands of other first responders, construction workers, clergy and volunteers who are ill and suffering the mounting effects of the worst terror attack in U.S. history.
But like the rest of America, Congress is distracted by flashier things. Those who responded on 9/11 - there are some 60,000 whose health is being monitored across most of the nation - are not a top priority.
The latest politician to put them on the back burner is New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, who promised in September to bring up the bill in his subcommittee in October. He never did. The Daily News asked three times what happened. Pallone's office answered twice that they'd look into it.
We're still waiting, and so are the ailing heroes of Sept.11, and the spouses and children of the dead and dying, because Jim Ryan will not be the last victim of Sept. 11.
Tired...
Family's anger at FDNY's snub of wake for 9/11 hero James Ryan
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...eros_wake.html
BY Michael J. Feeney and Katie Nelson
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Monday, December 28th 2009, 4:00 AM
The somber wake for Long Island firefighter James Ryan Sunday was filled with sadness and anger.
Upset that Ryan wasn't given a line-of-duty funeral service, Ryan's Engine Co. 320 organized an honor guard, bagpipes and transport vehicles on their own.
They said it was about respect for a hero who worked at the World Trade Center site for months after Sept. 11 and whose body gave in to the side-effects of pancreatic cancer on Christmas morning.
"I'm pretty bitter about it," said Ryan's brother, Michael, 50, of how his brother's death is being handled by the city fire department.
The family, including widow Magda and three children, has no doubt Ryan's death was related to 9/11.
"The doctors had no doubt," Michael Ryan said. "The people who were there that day were victims. They didn't hesitate. . . That's what a real hero does."
The FDNY didn't return calls about why Ryan was denied a hero's send-off.
Fellow firefighters said Ryan deserved a line of duty funeral with all the bells, whistles and family benefits that usually come with it.
"What the city is doing is wrong," said Keith Palumbo, 41, a firefighter with Engine Co. 320, as he walked into the wake at Brueggemann Funeral Home in East Northport, L.I. "This guy's family should have the honor and respect that everyone else gets."
He's hopeful for a large turnout for the funeral services slated for tomorrow.
"We want to embarrass the city," he said.
Firefighters union chief Steve Cassidy also blasted the city for ignoring Ryan's death.
"The New York City Fire Department has failed to acknowledge guys like Jimmy Ryan who have died," Cassidy said. "He's not the first and he's not going to be the last."
Tired...
9/11 first responders twice as likely to have asthma, researchers say
http://www.riskandinsurance.com/stor...ryId=312470321
12/28/2009
First responders who were exposed to caustic dust and toxic pollutants after the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks suffer from asthma at more than twice the rate of the general population, according to a recent study.
Researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that as many as 8 percent of the workers and volunteers who engaged in rescue and recovery, essential service restoration, and cleanup efforts reported experiencing post-9/11 asthma attacks or episodes.
Asthma is typically seen in only 4 percent of the population.
"Although previous WTC studies have shown significant respiratory problems, this is the first study to directly quantify the magnitude of asthma among WTC responders," said Hyun Kim, lead author of the analysis.
Researchers examined the medical records of 20,843 WTC responders who received medical screenings from July 2002 to December 2007 as part of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine-coordinated WTC program, which offers responders free medical surveillance examinations and targeted treatment for health conditions related to WTC work exposures. Results were compared with the U.S. National Health Survey Interviews adult sample data for the years 2000 and 2002-07.
"The significant chronic health problems associated with the WTC attacks only reinforces the need for stronger disaster preparedness plans as well as long-term medical follow-up for 9/11 responders and individuals who respond to disaster-related events," said Kalpalatha Guntupalli, president of the American College of Chest Physicians.
Tired...
Supporters Demand Medical Coverage For Victims Of WTC-Related Illnesses
http://ny1.com/1-all-boroughs-news-c...ted-illnesses/
NY1 News
1/5/2010
The names of more than 100 people who died because of illnesses related to the September 11th terrorist attacks, including first responders and cleanup workers, were read aloud by family and friends in Downtown Manhattan Tuesday.
The readings marked the fourth anniversary of the deat of New York Police Detective James Zadroga, the first 9/11 responder whose death was officially acknowledged to be the result of his work at the World Trade Center site.
People at the event called on Congress to pass a bill named after Zadroga, which would provide medical monitoring and treatment benefits for responders and recovery workers.
"Many came up to me today and said they had stage four cancer because of their work on 9/11. They were there for us. We have to be there for them," said Manhattan-Queens Representative Carolyn Maloney.
The congresswoman is a sponsor of the bill.
Tired...
Rescue workers rally at Ground Zero
http://www.northjersey.com/news/heal...ound_Zero.html
By MIKE KELLY
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
NEW YORK – They huddled in the winter shadows and the frigid air, this group of wounded veterans of Ground Zero, some of them leaning on canes or walkers, some breathing from oxygen tanks.
The father of James Zadroga is hugged by Bill Maher, of Maywood. Then, they read the list of names of the dead — all of them rescue workers and other volunteers who rushed, like them, into that smoldering place of terror on that sunny September morning eight years ago and breathed in too many toxins.
So far, that death list has 103 names but it will probably grow in the years to come.
There was Felix Hernandez. And Sandra Adrian. And Robert Grossman. And, finally, James Zadroga, the North Arlington kid who became a New York City police detective and then volunteered more than 400 hours at the Ground Zero clean up.
Four years ago yesterday, Zadroga took his last breath, his lungs blackened and clogged with Ground Zero’s dust and junk. He was only 34.
Here, yesterday, on a plaza only a few yards from Ground Zero, with the thump of jackhammers and the clang of cranes in the background, stood Zadroga’s father, Joseph, the former North Arlington police chief, fighting back tears as his son’s name was read
“It’s hard to believe four years have passed,” Joseph said, pulling his jacket close to his neck. “I still remember the day.”
Joe Zadroga is retired now and living in Little Egg Harbor where he and his wife, Linda, are raising their son’s 8-year-old daughter, Tyler Ann. Besides losing their son, James in 2006, the Zadroga’s lost James’s 29-year-old wife, Ronda, a year earlier to a heart ailment.
But the Zadroga’s tragic story is just one example of the long chain of suffering among Ground Zero workers.
Besides the 103 who have died so far, thousands more are in failing health. Which means that this is not just a story about health care, but a story about politics – and whether our federal government can find enough money to help.
Organizers of yesterday’s rally said they are hoping that the reading of the names of the dead will draw attention to the problem and pressure Congress into passing a new law, named after James Zadroga, to guarantee 30 years of health care and other compensation to sick Ground Zero workers.
But this is no easy task.
At yesterday’s rally, Ground Zero workers charged that Rep. Frank Pallone, the Monmouth democrat, was blocking the Zadroga bill in a health subcommittee he runs.
“He has the IQ of a soap dish,” said construction worker John Feal, who lost a portion of his foot at Ground Zero and has become a leading voice for injured workers.
In Washington, where he said he was tied up with legislation, Pallone cried foul.
“I’m 100 percent in support of this bill,” Pallone said in a telephone interview from his Capitol Hill office. “But the basic problem is that I don’t know if we have the votes.”
Feal and another injured Ground Zero veteran, Charles Giles, formerly of Garfield, say Pallone is bluffing.
“We’ve contacted every member of the committee and Pallone has the votes,” said Giles, who ran a private ambulance service and now takes more than 30 drugs to combat a variety of ailments, from asthma to congestive heart failure – all as a result of his more than 400 hours of service at Ground Zero.
“We’re sick and we’re dying,” Giles said. “We gave our hearts and our souls here. All we want is what we deserve.”
In Washington, Pallone insisted he is facing an uphill battle to help Giles and others like him. At issue, he said, is the proposal to make health benefits for Ground Zero workers an entitlement program, with a guaranteed $10 billion price tag.
But on the plaza near Ground Zero where the names of the dead were read, Pallone’s rationale – and political logic – seemed as frigid as the wind.
“It’s an outrage that we had to brave the cold weather to do this,” Feal said, his voice rising. “We’re not going to play dead.”
Standing nearby, Rep. Bill Pascrell, the Paterson democrat, listened quietly.
Sensing the potential political mess for fellow Democrats and his friend, Frank Pallone, Pascrell stepped forward and declared: “I will personally talk to Mister Pallone.”
“I don’t want to hear about the expenses,” Pascrell later said. “We will find the money to do this.”
“We do not want to be here for another anniversary of James Zadroga’s death,” added Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the New York City democrat who also attended the rally.
At the moment, Congress has been appropriating yearly installments for health care, most recently $70 million for the current fiscal year. Six hospitals – including the University of Medicine and Dentistry at Rutgers – offer free clinics for sick workers.
But there is no guarantee that sick workers will be covered as they get older.
Pallone said he wants a more permanent allocation of money and hospitalization. But he said some Congressional representatives – including Democrats – are balking, claiming that the problem is essentially confined to New York and New Jersey.
“I don’t want it to fail,” said Pallone of the Zadroga bill. “If it fails in my committee, it’s dead.”
The question of how to take care of sick Ground Zero workers has quietly lingered for several years on the fringes of political debates in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
How should these sick workers be identified? And with others in the nearby community also claiming to be sick, should the number of people eligible for benefits be expanded? If so, how much? And for how long?
As the rally ended, Joseph Zadroga turned to walk away. He stopped to speak to a friend, Joe Picurro, a former Ground Zero iron worker who grew up in Palisades Park who now needs a walker to lean on and an oxygen tank to help his lungs to breathe.
“My lungs are so swollen that they rub against my ribs,” Picurro said.
Joe Zadroga shook his head.
“These workers did this for their country,” he said. “Yet their country doesn’t help them.”
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