The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Deadlines for 9/11 resources drawing near
Southern Connecticut and New York City are exceptionally intertwined. Prepandemic, the Metro-North New Haven Line carried some 125,000 passengers every weekday and 39 million passengers a year.
Each morning and evening, commuters getting on in New Haven, Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich, along with riders on the three branches lines — New Canaan, Danbury, and Waterbury — make their way to Grand Central and Manhattan’s business districts.
The relationship was perhaps never so stark as after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Vehicles were left for weeks-onend at Metro-North commuter lots, awaiting their owners’ return.
From the moment the first tower was struck, until May 30, 2002, at the conclusion of the cleanup operation, some 100,000 first-responders flooded Lower Manhattan to help. They were firefighters, police, construction and utility workers and countless volunteers. Their duty was patriotic.
But no less patriotic were the actions of a combined 400,000 others who lived, attended, or taught school, or commuted to work downtown each day. Their lives and their health will forever be connected due to the toxic air they all breathed. They returned soon after the attacks because the EPA told them the air was safe. It was not!
America put on quite a show to demonstrate to the terrorists that while they might knock us down, we would get back up again, as resilient as ever. On Sept. 17, 2001, with New York Gov. George Pataki, Senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton and NYSE President Richard Grasso present, our financial markets reopened to fanfare. Now comes the other half of the story. The World Trade Center Health Program has linked 68 different types of cancer, plus a host of serious respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses to the toxins in Lower Manhattan, as tens of thousands have become seriously ill and countless have died.
While some 80 percent of first-responders have registered for the free federal Health Program, less than 7 percent of the civilians have thus far registered. That is a crisis.
The good news is that the Health Program and the Victims Compensation Fund (VCF) have been extended for 70 years. But there are strict deadlines for registering with the VCF and hundreds, if not thousands of people, missed an original two-year deadline for those who had a loved one die from a disease related to their toxic exposure. The law Congress enacted requires bereaved family members to register within two years of a death to qualify.
Fortunately, the VCF Special Master has made a one-time change and extended the deadline for families who lost a loved one more than two years
ago. They may now register a wrongful death claim up until July 29, 2021. Thereafter, family members, including spouses or dependents of those who die from a 9/11 illness, will have only two years from the date of death to register.
But, so many people, especially civilians, didn’t register for two reasons: either they thought the two programs were only for first-responders or were unaware of the presumption linking their loved one’s illness and death to the WTC toxins. This creates a critical opportunity for likely hundreds of Connecticut families whose loved ones were there, became seriously ill and perished.
For every year that passes, it will become more and more difficult to secure employer documentation and find witnesses to sign affidavits attesting that you or your loved one were there. Some who previously tried to sign up may have been deterred by the evidence requirements and the process. That should not be a deterrent.
Given that 93 percent of eligible civilians have yet to step forward and be counted, it is critical that they be informed of the facts.
Those who suffered permanent respiratory illnesses or cancer, and even those who were exposed but who are currently healthy, can and should register now for lifetime free health care for certified 9/11 illnesses and possible compensation.
As advocates for more than 20,000
members of the 9/11 community, this is very personal.
We all trusted the EPA’s vow that the air was safe. As result, we moved back into our own office, two blocks from the WTC site, in October 2001 as the fires continued to burn. Eventually more than 50 percent of our staff got cancer, and two, only 47 years old, died from it.
Now, as COVID-19 continues to sweep through our nation, the respiratory illnesses, and cancers, that afflict the 9/11 community puts those individuals at greater risk. As result of these compromised immune systems, more than 100 members of the 9/11 community we speak for have died of COVID-19 since March 2020.
This should be yet another warning sign for members of Connecticut communities to register and protect yourselves and your family.
Whether you were a first-responder, a debris removal worker, an office worker, stockbroker, a student, intern, teacher, journalist, restaurant employee, utility worker, volunteer, or any other person in Lower Manhattan on 9/11 or the months that followed, please register now.
A resident of Greenwich, Michael Barasch is an attorney and the managing partner of Barasch & McGarry: Lawyers for the 9/11 Community. His firm represents and is the legal advocate for more than 20,000 9/11 first-responders and survivors.