NY Daily News – September 11, 2014
Thirteen years ago, mass murder came from the sky as Islamist radicals turned those four airliners into missiles aimed at the heart of America. We remember, we mourn, we rage, our emotions no less raw after another turn of the calendar.
Never will there be balm for the slaughter of 2,977 that day and, before them, for the deaths of the six who perished in the first World Trade Center attack of 1993, and, after them, for the mounting toll among the rescue and recovery workers who were sickened by their service.
New York pauses again on this Thursday to suffer with resolve through the reading of the names that are our only way to mark each of the dead as individuals and to gather them all into a measure of infinite loss.
We remember even as the Islamist tide rises and the President of the United States formulates a strategy for meeting the threat by force of arms.
We remember even as too many American leaders appear ready to shamefully forget a national obligation to care for the still wounded and the still dying.
A week ago, the Fire Department added 13 names to its World Trade Center Memorial Wall.
They were not among the incomprehensible 343 members slain as they tried to rescue those trapped in the towers.
They were men who volunteered to help their city and country after the attack, who were told by their federal and city governments the environment was safe, who inhaled toxic chemicals on the smoldering Pile and who have paid with their health and lives, succumbing to lung diseases, cancers and other horrible ailments.
Those were the fates of the most recent 13: Firefighters William H. Quick, Willie T. Franklin, Keith E. Atlas and Walter Torres; Lieutenants Thomas J. Greaney and Steven B. Reisman; Captain Peter J. Casey; Battalion Chiefs Thomas R. Van Doran and Richard D. Arazosa; Supervising Fire Marshal Emil K. Harnischfeger; Paramedics Rudolph T. Havelka and John W. Wyatt, Jr.; and EMT Francis A. Charles.
Their names and stories should be known in Congress by the representatives who four years ago opposed providing health care to Trade Center ill. For these same hard-hearted officials seem poised to allow 9/11 medical funding to dry up next year.
In 2010, Congress okayed five years’ worth of money in the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. As a lame duck session closed, 175 Democrats voted yes, along with only 31 Republicans. Fully 148 Republicans — including the present speaker and majority leader, John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy — voted no or skipped the vote.
Now, the GOP faction holds the House majority. No one has confidence the Republicans will back extended funding.
More than 30,000 people have registered for care for 9/11-related sicknesses. At any one time, special Trade Center health programs treat some 15,000 patients. At least 2,800 people have been diagnosed with the 60 kinds of cancers that are caused or worsened by 9/11 toxins.
As the dead are remembered, so too must be the living by an American government that can ease suffering, extend lives and save them if at all possible.
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