New York City Fire Department officials confirmed Monday that the number of 9/11 emergency responders who died from toxic exposure at Ground Zero has risen to 370, adding 28 more to the death toll over the past year.
The grim statistics come as officials expect the numbers to grow and federal funding is on the verge of running out by 2028.
At a press conference, Lt. Jim Brosi, president of the FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association, said: 9/11 Rescuers and Survivors Healthcare Funding Remediation Act of 2024 This will fund the World Trade Center Health Program through 2033, before people forget about 9/11.
The FDNY will soon be hiring new recruits who were born after the 2001 terrorist attacks, he said.
“Without additional funding now, without permanent funding, the risk is that the further away we get from this tragedy, the more likely it is that people will be less sympathetic to the need,” Brosi said.
The most recent victim was buried last Saturday, less than a year after the firefighter was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
“Less than a year later he was on duty on a fire engine and less than 12 months later he was buried,” Brosi said. “You have an active, healthy, vibrant young man in his early 50s, who died less than 12 months later. That's the part that doesn't show up in the statistics.”
Another member who recently died lost his voice in the last few years of his life due to thyroid and esophageal cancer, Brosi said, and another member under 50 had just been fitted with a permanent colostomy bag.
“These are serious diseases. People are suffering, but it's not showing up in the data,” Brosi said.
The World Trade Center Health Program monitors and treats more than 132,000 emergency responders and survivors from New York City, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa., who suffer from long-term health problems related to 9/11. But lawmakers “routinely seem to underestimate” how many people enter the program years later, said Andrew Ansbro, chief of the uniformed corps of the New York City Fire Department.
“Every time we go to Washington to get a budget proposal, we never get the full amount, we always get some of it and some of it left on the table,” Ansbro said.
Brosi added that the original bill “was not necessarily passed with inflationary costs.”
“In addition, with dramatic advances in cancer research, each new drug released is typically much more expensive than those currently on the market,” he said.
Analysis of dust and other hazardous materials at all three sites found “numerous toxic substances” that could cause short- and long-term health problems, including contaminants that lingered in parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn for months. According to CDirect current.
If passed, the federal bill would create a new formula for determining funding through 2090 and would also increase funding for research into 9/11-related illnesses.
Without additional funding, the program would have to start turning away new applicants as soon as 2028, he said. One Sheet From the office of co-sponsor U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
“We know our members continue to get sick. It's not stopping. Every month, we're losing three to four rookie FDNY officers,” Ansbro said.
Ansbro confirmed the latest additions to the World Trade Center Memorial Wall at the New York Fire Department headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn, saying the wall currently has 363 names, with half of the spaces blank, but plans are to fill them in.
“I counted the available space on that wall and there is room for 960 names. I believe if we continue at this rate we will reach that number one day,” he said.
“We pray that this is the last 9/11 victim, but unfortunately we know that this is not the end.”
