June 12, 2019
HOLLY V. HAYS | INDIANAPOLIS STAR
Former “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart gave tearful testimony Tuesday when he urged members of Congress to renew funding for the evaporating 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund covering first responders.
But the lingering effects of the World Trade Center attacks extend far beyond Lower Manhattan.
More than half of the 62 first responders who went to New York City with Indiana’s Task Force One have reported diagnoses of illnesses believed to be related to their exposure to the pile, Tom Neal, the task force’s coordinator, told IndyStar on Wednesday.
Neal and other members of the Indiana group were deployed for eight days that September to assist with search, rescue and clean-up efforts. Nearly 18 years after the attack, some of his colleagues are still dealing with the fallout.
“When the nation needed heroes, first responders stepped up,” Neal said. “We responded. … We didn’t think about oh, in 20 years, 18 years from now, we’re all gonna have ill health effects.”
The 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund
Stewart’s impassioned speech Tuesday was not his first public show of support for the men and women who responded to the attacks in New York.
In 2010, he dedicated an episode of “The Daily Show” to the health care aid and compensation package known as the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which was signed into law the next year. In 2015, he lobbied for an $8 billion reauthorization of the bill, which also re-established the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.
But there was a hitch: That fund was only extended for five years, meaning it’s set to expire in December of 2020. Allotted more than $7 billion, it’s now running out of money, forcing potential cuts to those already approved — and those still applying for — aid.
“It would be one thing if their callous indifference and rank hypocrisy were benign,” Stewart said in his testimony. “But it’s not. Your indifference cost these men and women their most valuable commodity: time …the one thing they’re running out of.”
Billions of dollars in funding seems to be significant, but it doesn’t go as far as one would think, Neal said.
“When you’re talking billions of dollars, that’s a lot of money,” he said. “But when you’re talking thousands of people that are now in the program, it doesn’t take a lot, if they’re truly incapacitated by their illnesses, to have that offset some of their expenses.”
The bill, which passed unanimously Wednesday out of the House Judiciary Committee, will next go to the House floor.
9/11-related illnesses
Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001, but many more are still dying.
More than 75,000 responders — including police, fire and volunteers — have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the bulk of them ages 45-64. Most have reported respiratory and digestive conditions.
When the towers collapsed, a gray powder blanketed Lower Manhattan.
“You couldn’t get away from it,” Neal said. “You walked in it, and it would just almost be like a liquid just floating up from the ground, and once it was disturbed, it would stay aloft in the air for a long time.”
They didn’t know it at the time, but testing since the attack has revealed what exactly was in that powder. Two skyscrapers’ worth of concrete and glass. Asbestos. Drywall. Paper. Human hair.
And they weren’t just breathing it in. The fine powder coated their skin, blanketed streets and infiltrated air systems in buildings that were blocks away from the pile.
They wore respiratory protection, he said, but it was at times impractical and insufficient.
“Would we do anything different if we had today’s equipment on September 11th? Probably. But we didn’t,” Neal said. “And, so, we responded with the equipment that we had and we protected ourselves the best we could. And now we just wait.”
Unable to forget
Neal and others worked from FDNY Station 10, which was across the street from the World Trade Center and served as a command post for first responders. He was a plans manager, documenting each of the team’s moves.
“Literally on that corner is where I stood and watched our squads work interchangeably with NYPD and FDNY and those personnel to try and locate the missing survivors or locate those casualties in the collapse,” he said.
Three Task Force One members who went to the pile have died in the 18 years since the attack, at least two of them from cancers covered by the Zadroga Act.
Neal knows his colleagues aren’t the only ones suffering.
“We’re just a small sampling … of thousands of people that responded or volunteered to the World Trade Center that are being affected,” Neal said. “As Jon said (in his testimony), cancer doesn’t have a timeline. Cancer’s gonna show up when it wants to show up.”
Neal said he doesn’t regret going to Ground Zero, and he’s willing to bet every member of the task force who went with him would say the same. He’s healthy now, but acknowledges there’s still time for illness to develop.
“We’re never guaranteed what tomorrow’s gonna be,” Neal said. “So, I think, you just live each day to its fullest and you hope for the best.”
USA TODAY contributed to this story.
Call IndyStar reporter Holly Hays at 317-444-6156. Follow her on Twitter: @hollyvhays.