Today, on September 11, 2018, at 10:30 a.m., in Rock Island, IL, Congresswoman Cheri Bustos participated in the annual 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony at the Rock Island Arsenal. On the 17th anniversary of the events that took place on 9/11, Congresswoman Bustos delivered remarks following Deputy to the Commander Michael Hutchinson, Lieutenant General (Ret.) Raymond Mason, and Congressman Dave Loebsack. In attendance were Gold Star families, military members, Arsenal employees, veterans, and members of the community.
In 2015, Congresswoman Bustos co-sponsored the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Reauthorization Act. This legislation funds lifetime medical care for 9/11 first responders, for illnesses related to their work at the fallen towers. The bill was included in the 2015 omnibus legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama.
Editor’s note: This abbreviated news article chronicles the deaths of Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents, Firefighters, and Police Officers who have died of cancer, since the terrorist attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon, and a crash site/field in Shanksville, PA. Their immediate rescue attempts and later performance of duties, over several weeks, put them in peril that continues17 years later.
The author is Del Quentin Wilber for Tribune News Service. New York City Police Aviation Unit Detective Greg Semendinger took the photograph on September 11, 2001.
In all, 15 FBI Agents have died from cancers linked to toxic exposure, during the investigation and cleanup….Three of them have died since March–a rash of deaths that has reopened traumas of the worst terrorist attack in U. S. history and sparked fresh anxieties.
“It’s like bin Laden is still reaching our from the grave,” said FBI Agent Thomas O’Connor, FBI Agents Association, a service and advocacy group for active and former Agents. “It affects us all in serious ways. People are dying, others are sick. Those that are not yet sick wonder” about every minor affliction, “is it really cancer?”
The 15 Agents’ deaths…are a tiny part of a much larger tragedy. More than 7500 emergency responders, recovery and cleanup workers, and volunteers at the three September 11 crash sites have been diagnosed with various forms of cancer. [This is] according to the World Trade Center Health Program…administered by the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most did not wear protective gear, because agencies did not understand the danger in the poisons unleashed by burning jet fuel and other hazardous material. More than a dozen current and former Agents who responded…now have cancer.
New York City officials say that more than 300 Firefighters and Police Officers already have succumbed to cancers and other diseases related to the attacks.
Scores of Agents spent several weeks digging in the rubble, breathing the toxic cloud of carcinogenic fumes and dust. “Most [first responders] just rushed down there and were not protected from the toxins in the air or the dust cloud,” stated Dr. Michael Crane of Mt. Sinai Health System in New York. “They were literally eating and breathing this material. There were known carcinogens in the air.”
A member of the FBI helicopter crew, Scott McDonough, spent several weeks leaning out of a helicopter, to take close-up photos of debris. “We flew through the dust,” he said. “It stuck to you. In your nose. In your lungs.” In 2016 he had surgery for rectal cancer, which the Federal Health Program determined was related to his September 11 work. Since then, McDonough said, he is cancer free. He is encouraging his colleagues to get evaluated.
“You have to do this for your family.”