By Lynn Norwood
September, 2006
I was disappointed in the 9/11 5th anniversary memorial coverage. 3,000 people died that day and as a country we went to war.
But 8,000 first responders, nearly three times the number of victims in the towers, are severely ill and dying of various cancers and lung, kidney, and neurological disease as a result of exposure to the well known toxins at ground zero. In the rush to get Wall Street up and running, those on the front lines were told by our government that the air was safe to breath, despite evidence to the contrary. In the spirit of obeying orders in times of war, these heroic first responders did their morbid job without complaint.
These same victims, dying now in their twenties, thirties and forties, leaving small children behind, have to spend their last days fighting for pennies in workman’s comp and social security, waiting years for payment until they are too sick and too in dept from hospital bills to care.
Any remembrance of 9/11 with no mention of these heroic first responders and the losses they will continue to suffer over the next ten two twenty years is outrageous, any notion of supporting our troops, that excludes supplementing the families of these front line victims, criminal.