09/11/2014
Thanking Our #9/11 First Responders
By Jared M. Placitella
As another year passes, each one placing more distance between today and those events of 13 years ago, it is all the more important to remember that while time passes, the impact of those events are still reverberating. The towers are rebuilt; the museum completed. But the lives of so many heroes are still broken and recovering. On September 11, 2001, we lost 343 firefighters, and 72 law enforcement officers. All of these men and women ran into the towers when everyone else was running out. Yet that was only the first wave. For days, weeks, and months after the attacks a second wave of fellow firefighters, law enforcement officers, and good samaritans, left their jobs to work through the ruins in search of their brothers and sisters and possible survivors. They searched for the missing, marched through the pile, dug out of the pit and cleared the rubble all to help us move on. In so doing they saw things that no person should see and were exposed to perhaps the most toxic environment known to man. Yet this neither deterred their efforts nor impeded their progress. Instead, as the days passed from fall to winter to spring scores of responders flooded into the city to help. Some of those in this second wave of responders, and their families, have already paid the ultimate sacrifice, their lives claimed by diseases created by the toxic plume of carcinogens. For others, the fight still continues. Many of these individuals are physically disabled. The scars are seared into their memories as well as their skin. Just as they helped us in our time of greatest need, it is now our turn to help them in theirs. On January 2, 2011, President Obama signed into law the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010. This Act has served two important purposes: treatment and compensation. First, the Zagroda Act amended the Public Health Service Act to create the World Trade Center...
Information for people interested in enrolling the World Trade Center Health Program or those who are currently in the Program and want more...
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