A report has been released revealing the shocking number of rescue workers of the 9/11 terrorist attack on The Twin Towers in New York with cancer, 13 years after the tragedy.
According to the World Trade Centre Health Program at New York’s Mount
Sinai Hospital of the 37,000 police, rescuers and volunteers, 1,655 have
been diagnosed. With addition of 863 firefighters, the tragic sums rises to 2,518. Many of those affected are seeking compensation for their illnesses.
Recently a retired captain from the New York Fire Department
was awarded $1.5 million (£883,500) from the federal 9/11 Victim
Compensation Fund (VCF) for lung disease and inoperable pancreatic
cancer.
In May the 63-year-old brought a compensation hearing to tears as he
told of his plight.
The firefighter, previously standing 6ft 2ins tall and weighing 17
stone, looked a shadow of his former self shedding more than six stone
after undergoing gruelling chemotherapy and radiation.
The number of 9/11 rescue workers who have been diagnosed with cancer is
truly shocking.
For the figure to pass 2,500 less than 13 years following the attacks is
appalling.
But given the conditions these men and women were working in for days,
weeks and months after the Twin Towers collapsed it is perhaps not so
surprising.
I remember trudging through six inches of soft beige dust down towards
Ground Zero on the morning after and thinking what sort of chemicals
were contained inside.
I was only in Manhattan there for three weeks and not in the middle of
the cordoned off area where the buildings continued burning for months
afterwards
These workers were the bravest of the brave.
Sifting through rubble for hour after hour day after day trying to find
survivors at first and then later to recover bodies.A heroic firefighter was photographed climbing the towers to his almost certain death.
Amazingly he escaped but the man who saved his life that day later died from cancer.