NEW YORK —For the second time in seven weeks, the Elon Musk-Donald Trump chainsaw of cuts in federal people and money has hit the survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on and destruction of the World Trade Center–and the union workers who toiled afterwards to search for human remains while cleaning up “The Pile” of rubble which had been New York City’s World Trade Center.
The first Musk-Trump attack on the WTC survivors was on Valentine’s Day. Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” computer nerds ordered the elimination of 21 of the 93 workers in the actual health program created to care for the surviving first responders and cleanup personnel.
Before that first chainsaw hack, the health program, run by the Centers for Disease Control, planned to expand by 48%, to 138 people. The program saw a sudden 10,000-person surge in victims needing treatment for the rare diseases they—or their family members—contracted in later years.
This time, Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Manhattan resident, decimated the oversight and research agency for the 9/11 survivors, the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health. Among those let go were NIOSH’s director, who had direct oversight over the 9/11 research, and most of the doctors working on it.
That led Benjamin Chevat, executive director of Citizens for the Extension of the James Zadroga Act—the legislation establishing the 9/11 program–to issue a statement calling the firings “another example of chainsaw incompetence.”
Andrew Ansbro, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of New York, IAFF Local 94, told local media the latest cuts “make it impossible for any Fire Fighter who receives a new WTC-related cancer diagnosis to access care from the WTC Health Program.” His members, and members from Local 354, rushed to the Twin Towers to fight the catastrophe. And 343 of them, plus their priest, died.
“It is unacceptable that the very agencies designed to protect workers are being dismantled under the guise of efficiency,” Ansbro continued.
Just days before, Local 94 held a wake and funeral for the 17th survivor to die this year, Christopher Revere, 66. He had to retire from the fire department only a year and a half after the attacks.
John Feal, a 9/11 survivor who lobbied for the Zadroga Act, told the New York Daily News the NIOSH cuts and the director’s firing were “the most reckless, careless, unconscionable, disgusting, and vile act against those in the 9/11 community that has been committed since Sept. 11, 2001.
“Welcome to being part of the atrocity because you have bellied up to the bar for a drink with those who caused that fateful day,” said Feal. “You have damaged thousands of people in an instant with your actions today. You have spit in the faces of the 9/11 Community for the last time,” he vowed.
Besides the Fire Fighters and their Catholic priest, other unionists who died when the towers crashed included telephone line people from the Communications Workers, the plane crews from AFA-CWA and the Air Line Pilots, and Unite HERE members toiling in the Windows on the World restaurant atop the Twin Towers.
Since then, Iron Workers, Laborers, Operating Engineers, and other building trades workers who helped with months of cleanup died, along with surviving firefighters and exposed family members.
All the workers inhaled the toxic mixture of particulates, jet fuel, asbestos, and chemicals unleashed when the Twin Towers collapsed. Exposures increased because GOP President George W. Bush’s government first told the workers toiling on “The Pile” that the air was safe to breathe without respirators.
Musk’s first cut in the 9/11 workforce produced a massive bipartisan uproar among the New York and New Jersey congressional delegations, the Zadroga organization, and the two locals, among others. President Trump, who in 2001 could look out his Big Apple apartment windows and watch the Trade Center collapse, quickly backtracked. There has been no White House response yet to this cut.
CONTRIBUTOR
