Public Employee Press

Death of a hero

Four years after 9/11, EMT Tim Keller
succumbs to lung disease

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

Four years after the World Trade Center came crashing down, killing close to 3,000 people, the terrorist attack claimed another life.

Tim Keller, an Emergency Medical Technician and member of Local 2507, was one of the true heroes of the day. Among the first rescue workers to arrive at Ground Zero, he witnessed the collapse of both Twin Towers.

Along with many union workers and volunteers, Keller searched the rubble pile around the clock. As he sifted through the burning wreckage and mangled steel beams in a futile search for lives to save, he breathed in a noxious mixture of smoke and asbestos-laden dust, and his own life started to run out.

Several days after working at Ground Zero, Keller began experiencing respiratory problems, coughing up chunks of the material he breathed in at the dis-aster site.

“You wouldn’t believe how much sooty, dark stuff would come out of him,” said Marianne Pizzitola, pension coordinator for Uniformed EMTs and Paramedics Local 2507. “He’d cough up actual gravel. It was awful. His lungs were completely destroyed by the toxins he inhaled.”

Support for family
His condition declined quickly, but the gravely weakened hero kept going to work for three years to feed his family. Doctors gave him steroids, oxygen and a machine to help his breathing at night.

Tim Keller retired from the Fire Dept. in November 2004 and passed away June 23 in his Long
Island home. He was 41 years old and is survived by his two sons and former wife.

“We are deeply saddened by Tim’s passing,” said Local 2507 President Pat Bahnken. “We intend to see that his family receives the same kind of support that families get after line-of-duty deaths.”

In December 2004, the FDNY awarded Mr. Keller a three-quarter-pay disability pension, but
paperwork problems at the New York City Employees’ Retirement System delayed his payments for months. He had only recently begun getting monthly stipends of $350. He died without once receiving a full disability payment, which would have been around $2,000 a month, according to the union. Mr. Keller was unable to get benefits from Social Security or the 9/11 victim’s fund.

The collapsing towers killed Paramedic Carlos Lillo of Local 2507 and Paramedic Lieutenant Ricardo Quinn of Uniformed EMS Officers Local 3621 on 9/11, but Keller was apparently the first Emergency Medical Service worker to die of a long-term disease that began that fatal day. The number of illnesses reported by union members who worked at the site continues to rise.

Pizzitola is currently working with 20 other members who have applied for three-quarter disability pensions for injuries or illnesses related to 9/11. She says 15 of them have pulmonary disease and five more suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Several who have become ill are afraid to leave their jobs because they may not get their pension, she said.

“The FDNY is pretty good about acknowledging the disabilities,” said Pizzitola. “But the NYCERS board may still deny them a pension, so a lot of workers don’t want to risk it.”

She is also working with a few members who have been denied pensions and are now on Workers’ Compensation, pending termination from the FDNY under section 71 of Civil Service Law, which lets the department fire employees who miss 12 consecutive months for a service-connected disability.

Unlike Firefighters, whose claims for pension, disability and work-related injuries are handled by the FDNY and their pension fund, EMS workers must go through the Law Dept. for Workers’ Compensation and the New York City Employees’ Retirement System.

EMS rescuers were among the 45 unionists who bused to Washington July 21 to press for restoration of $125 million in federal health funds that the Republican-led Congress rescinded (see page 28).

The handling of medical claims by the city has come under fire from Thomas Eppinger, president of Uniformed EMS Officers Local 3621. “It puts people between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “Who ever thought four years ago when we were heroes that we’d be reduced to this?”