Public Employee Press

Conference: Are we ready for the next 9/11?

"Are We Prepared for the Next 9/11?" was the frightening question posed by a Sept. 16 conference organized by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health that included DC 37 Safety and Health Director Lee Clarke and former Emergency Medical Service Local 2057 President Patrick Bahnken.

Clarke served with the head of a 9/11 health center, a medical professor and a top Fire Dept. medical officer on a panel about the medical effects of the terrorist attack. She told of the lasting impact of the rescue and recovery effort on workers' health and outlined the long road between illness from the exposures and remedy in the form of the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which became law in January.

Clarke pointed out that because many first responders are too ill to work, they face "financial devastation," which makes treatment more difficult.

Bahnken spoke passionately of the deaths of his members due to "the 800-pouund gorilla in the room - cancer." He charged that "the bureaucracy involved with the Zadroga Act is killing people" by deciding that the act does not cover cancer as a 9/11-caused disease.

"We are not lab rats, we are not statistics . we want to grow old. At the very least, we don't want to die because of the bureaucracy," he said.

Medical specialists at the conference acknowledged that there is a gap between the human needs and scientific certainty. As unions press to get cancer covered, DC 37 safety staffer Guille Mejia has been added to the committee of experts reconsidering cancer and other exemptions from the act (See 'Guille Mejia to key federal team.')