My name is Irv Kaplan and I am from Manhattan. I started this blog after the crane crash in Manhattan on March 15th. If you are unfamiliar with the story, 7 people were injured (6 construction workers and one person visiting here). Seeing all of the rescue workers searching for those presumed dead obviously reminded me of 9/11 and the massive effort undertaken to unearth the rubble after the WTC crash. For over 8 months, rescue workers were at the site and had to deal with bleak and dangerous conditions. After the tragedy of 9/11, America and this city in particular, felt a renewed commitment to those who served us both abroad and domestically. Just as we would pray for soldiers who would take us through 2 difficult and ongoing battles overseas we also felt for our neighbors who were risking their health helping us clean up from the worst terrorist attack on American soil. As we saw our fellow New Yorkers breathing unsafe air at the WTC cleanup site, everyone in this city during the fall and winter of 2001 into early 2002 knew that we would not let them be forgotten. But as timed dragged on and we began to heal, we began to slowly try to forget the unimaginable pain all of us felt. Unfortunately those who helped us deal with that pain first-hand at the WTC site were slowly forgotten too. Promises were made and promises appear to have been broken. A hypocrisy has been created that would have been inconceivable as we watched this all unfold immediately after the attacks. But as lives have slowly moved on, those that were promised to be taken care of haven’t received anything that they were promised. I am not suggesting that these promises were made falsely, but bureaucracy and underhanded behavior by those in the private sector who promised to all New Yorkers (all Americans really) that this scenario wouldn’t happen. But it has and I hope to raise awareness and anger at what has transpired and help those who have suffered so much to help us get through this.

A study by the Mt. Sinai medical center has found that 70% of those who worked at the WTC site have suffered some breathing problems. This is not just an occupational hazard as many have developed lung cancer and some have died and more inevitably will. This is a societal failure as it is noted that only 30% of the rescue workers in October, 2001 (a month after the attacks) were wearing proper breathing equipment. On September 12, before any data could obviously be studied, the government promised New Yorkers that the air was safe to breathe and that rescue workers would be fine. On its face this wouldn’t make sense as we could see the cloud of ash and debris hanging over this city. But we were still in shock and trusted that the government would be doing all it could to protect us and those who worked on recovering the area. But now we know that the government’s interest lied in speeding up the cleanup for economic reasons and that there were obviously acceptable risks that they were willing to take. But now we have a populace of fire, police, and rescue workers who, driven by their desire to help the city recover, were working in an unsafe environment. The EPA reported that they had no studies showing elevated levels of cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) when it turns out they had 4 studies that indicated amounts that caused serious concern. OSHA refused to enforce federal work-safety standards and contributed to health issues that could have been prevented by guaranteeing the safe environment that this situation demanded. Ground-Zero workers have even indicated in interviews that there were only certain areas of the clean-up site that required those there to go through decontamination. It all led to the health problems that we are seeing now.

Obviously certain health problems were unavoidable after undergoing an attack of this magnitude. What was promised of our fellow citizens was that the health of those who helped would be taken care of. In 2004 the city promised to handle the claims of those affected by setting up a fund that would maintain a $1 billion fund for the health claims of first-responders, rescue workers, and their families. Instead, what we’ve seen is that this office is using its funds to hire attorneys to try to deny claims of those that have suffered these problems. We also have learned that the woman, Christine Lasala the President and CEO of WTC Captive Insurance Company, who is helping to oversee this project and managing the efforts to deny the claimants is being paid $350,000 annually and has $20,000 of health care for herself and her family. To say that these funds could be better used would be a gross understatement. What is even more agonizing is that this information was kept from New Yorkers until 2006. What was the city and especially WTC Captive Insurance Company looking to hide? Obviously this was an obscene pay package that would have angered us as we heard more and more news reports about worsening health problems for those who sacrificed so much for us at the site. Worse yet, by paying someone from the private sector (basically someone we can’t vote out of office) so much we are seeing how much responsibility is being deflected and how little the city and especially Ms. Lasala and her staff care about the health problems that keep increasing without the funds promised to help with them. As I mentioned, a lot of these health problems were caused by governmental decisions that were quickly made after 9/11. As much as those anger me, the fact that we are approaching the 7 year anniversary of the attacks and so many people are still without adequate care and we are generously funding a woman who is in some cases actively working against those that she was supposed to aid, is infuriating. I hope, in the coming weeks and months, to expose more of what we know about the WTC Captive Insurance Company and what we can hope to do about it.