New York extends filing deadline for 9/11 rescue workers seeking compensation

New York state has reopened the window for workers and volunteers seeking compensation for lost wages and medical benefits arising from their involvement in the rescue, recovery and clean-up at the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

A law signed by the Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of the attacks that caused the collapse of the twin towers in lower Manhattan, extends the claims filing deadline until 11 September 2018. It lapsed two years ago.

“We still feel the pain and the loss like it was yesterday, and the thousands of brave men and women who stepped up in our darkest hour are still grappling with the after-effects,” Cuomo said at the signing in Manhattan.

The law also authorizes new claims for related injuries and illnesses since the attacks through this year’s anniversary for workers’ compensation, disability and accidental death benefits that were disallowed because of late filing.

This weekend, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the time of 9/11, former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman, told the Guardian she was sorry for the agency’s advice in the aftermath of the attacks that the air around Ground Zero in New York was safe to breathe.

“Whatever we got wrong, we should acknowledge and people should be helped,” she said, adding that she still “feels awful” about the tragedy and its aftermath.

“I’m very sorry that people are sick,” she said. “I’m very sorry that people are dying and if the EPA and I in any way contributed to that, I’m sorry. We did the very best we could at the time with the knowledge we had.”

Dr Jim Melius, a member of the advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch, said: “Within the next five years we will be at the point where more people have died from World Trade Center-related illnesses than died from the immediate impact of the attacks.”

Almost 3,000 people were killed on 9/11 in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington, and in the crash of a fourth hijacked airliner in a field in Pennsylvania.

Melius, who is also a doctor at the New York State Laborers Union, an adviser to the White House on worker health and chair of the steering committee overseeing the government health program for 9/11 responders, added: “There are a lot of people who are very, very ill with lung disease who will see at least 10 years taken from their normal life span.

“We are already seeing many more premature deaths occurring, and among younger people, from the cancers. There is going to be a new generation of widows and widowers.”

At the bill signing on Sunday, Sal Turturici, who attended in a wheelchair, said of the extension: “It’s going to help a lot of people who are in harm’s way right now. They’re on the end of losing their benefits because they’re running out of time or running out of any grants or any kind of time to get to extend their pay, so they’re falling off the payroll.”

Turturici’s wife, a fire department paramedic like her husband, said he was diagnosed on 4 October with terminal cancer. Wendi Turturici said Cuomo had given her hope that she can take care of their three young children and give her husband peace.

Thousands of people who aided in the rescue and recovery effort were found to have respiratory ailments and other health problems in the years after the attacks. Cancer has remained the biggest fear for people exposed to the gritty soot at the site.

New York extends filing deadline for 9/11 rescue workers seeking compensation

9/11 health crisis continues: New York cleaner fights cancer 15 years later

On September 11 2001, Merita Zejnuni began her shift at 7am, cleaning offices at Goldman Sachs on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan. At 8.46am, she was in an internal stairwell. She didn’t hear a hijacked passenger jet slamming into the nearby north tower of the World Trade Center.

At 9.03am, though, she was on the 31st floor of her building. She saw a large plane speed past the window. It was the second hijacked jet, and it crashed into the south tower. Soon after, with sickening roars, the twin towers came down. Outside the Goldman Sachs office, the sky went dark.

“I was screaming,” she said, “screaming ‘We are going to die,’ the stuff was crashing on the window, probably it was pieces of bodies and planes and building, and so many papers, papers …”

Terrified office workers came pouring into the building, many covered in ash and soot. Zejnuni, who is now 52, handed out small towels and paper face masks and helped people clean themselves up. Then all the bankers began trying to make their way home.

“In one hour, the building was empty,” she said.

The boss of her cleaning company asked her and a few others to stay, to clean up. She did not sleep or go home for two and a half days, after which she was reunited with her 12-year-old son at their apartment in Queens.

In the days and nights she cleaned, she said, she had no masks left to use herself and no access to a shower or clean clothes. Soldiers stationed on the street outside gave her food. She was covered in dust; it filled her mouth and throat.

“It was disgusting,” she said. “I looked like a ghost. I was gray from head to foot.”

She took a day off, then came back to work.

Two months ago, despite an excellent health history and no record of cancer in her family, Zejnuni was found to have breast cancer. She has never smoked, but the doctors told her she also had a spot on her lung.

Two weeks before she sat down in Central Park to talk to the Guardian on Thursday night, she had a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction using flesh from her abdomen. She was already back at work.

‘I would cough so violently, like an old lady’

Smoke and ash engulf lower Manhattan on September 11 2001. Photograph: Greg Semendinger/AP

Zejnuni is one of many ordinary workers who dealt with the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks but who have never been publicly hailed as heroes like the firefighters, cops and workers who cleared the wreckage itself.

Certified as sick by the federal World Trade Center Health Program, created by the federal government in 2011, she sometimes still wheezes.

“In 2003, I got a painful cough,” she said. “I would cough so violently, like an old lady.”

Thousands are suffering in a post-9/11 health crisis. Many have died or are dying, despite government officials insisting in 2001 that the air in lower Manhattan was safe.

After the towers fell, Zejnuni managed to get a call through to her sister. “I told her, if anything happened to me, to look after my son,” she said.

Some time after 9/11, her company put her on night shifts, working virtually alone. Zejnuni said she asked her union if they could arrange for her to work days, as she was traumatized by her experiences after the attacks.

“A guy there told me, ‘Oh, that 9/11 bullshit – you’re lucky to have a job,’” she said. “I had to carry on working nights.”

Zejnuni moved to the US from her native Albania in 1997 and earned US citizenship. On 9/11, when she was asked to stay in lower Manhattan and work while most fled, she agreed because, she said: “I saw the army outside and I thought, ‘Let’s clean up in this country that opened its doors for me and gave me opportunity. I would give my life for this country.’”

For six years, her chronic cough was barely treated. Her chest was so painful, and her post-9/11 anxiety so acute, that although she never stopped working, she became depressed, drank too much and even contemplated suicide, she said.

Finally, she saw a poster on the train about specialist healthcare for 9/11 survivors. In 2009, she began receiving treatment at Mount Sinai hospital, one of the main centers looking after those affected by the attacks of 15 years ago.

“The doctors and nurses treated me like a human being,” she said. She stopped drinking and her self-confidence began to return. In October, she will consult with her doctors again, to assess the state of her cancer.

“I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I just want to work, but sometimes my body makes it difficult. I think back to those soldiers standing outside in the debris. They were so young and they would smile and say, ‘Hello, ladies.’ I wonder if they are even still alive.”

9/11 health crisis continues: New York cleaner fights cancer 15 years later

9/11 health crisis: death toll from illness nears number killed on day of attacks

The death toll among those sickened by the toxic dust and ash of Ground Zero will within as little as five years exceed the number of people killed on the day of the 9/11 attacks, experts say.

As those who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and on Flight 93 gather for Sunday’s 15th anniversary of the terror attacks that killed almost 3,000 people, a post-9/11 health crisis is growing.

At least 1,000 people – and probably many more – have died often lingering, painful deaths resulting from illnesses related to their exposure to debris that spread from the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers in downtown Manhattan. More than 37,000 are officially recognised as sick.

Calls are growing for a new monument to be added to the World Trade Center site, to pay tribute to those who have died or become sick since 9/11 because of toxic exposure.

“Within the next five years we will be at the point where more people have died from World Trade Center-related illnesses than died from the immediate impact of the attacks,” said Dr Jim Melius, a doctor at the New York State Laborers Union who also advises the White House on worker health, chairs the steering committee overseeing the government health program for 9/11 responders, and is a member of the advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch.

“There are a lot of people who are very, very ill with lung disease who will see at least 10 years taken from their normal life span,” he said, “and we are already seeing many more premature deaths occurring, and among younger people, from the cancers. There is going to be a new generation of widows and widowers.”

In 2001, government officials, most prominently the then head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Christine Todd Whitman, assured those in lower Manhattan in the days after the attacks that the air was safe.

In an interview with the Guardian this weekend, Whitman said for the first time that in hindsight she had been mistaken. She apologised to those affected by the toxic debris.

After al-Qaida terrorists flew hijacked passenger jets into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, the towers collapsed. Clouds of fumes and debris billowed out over New York City. Of 2,977 people killed in the attacks, 2,753 died at the World Trade Center.

The debris left by the twin towers, the main concentration of which became known as “the pile”, contained asbestos, lead, glass, heavy metals, concrete, poisonous gases, oil and other dangerous substances that mixed with exploding jet fuel, the contents of hundreds of offices and dead bodies to fill the air and cover the area around the site.

“It was disgusting,” said Merita Zejnuni, 52, a cleaner who was working a few blocks from Ground Zero in the offices of banking giant Goldman Sachs on the morning of 9/11. “It coated your mouth and your throat. I was covered in it – I looked like a ghost.”

Zejnuni developed a violent, chronic cough and was recently found to have breast cancer. This weekend, speaking to the Guardian, she gave her first interview. Her lawyer, Troy Rosasco, said Zejnuni only found out last month she could apply for compensation. Rosasco believes thousands of other people are sick or dying as a result of exposure around Ground Zero, away from the public eye.

“There is a general consensus that people down there got huge exposure,” he said, “but many don’t even know why they are sick.”

Last month, researchers at Stony Brook University announced that cognitive impairment, a leading risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, was being detected among first responders who went to Ground Zero on and around 9/11.

“That’s scary news,” said Rosasco. “I have probably gotten 50 calls in the last two days from people who are really frightened about that.”

In 2010, after years of political battle, Congress passed the $ 4bn Zadroga Act – named for a police captain who worked on rescue efforts at Ground Zero and died in 2006 after developing breathing problems – to cover the health costs of those poisoned by the debris and fumes of 9/11. Late last year, it agreed to extend the act’s provisions for 75 years. There is a separate, official Victim Compensation Fund.

In 2011, the federal World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP) was established. It has 75,000 registered members, 87% of whom worked on rescue, recovery and clean-up. The rest are New York residents or workers. A total of 1,140 registered members have died since the program was created in 2011, WTCHP spokeswoman Christy Spring said.

“Because of the way the legislation was written,” she said, “there is an understanding that there is a link between the exposure and the illnesses people are suffering from.”

Causes of death are not recorded by the WTCHP. There is no central record for how many people died between 2001 and 2011 from illnesses linked to 9/11 fumes and debris, Spring said, nor any way of knowing exactly how many other people have died without any record of their illnesses having been caused by exposure near Ground Zero.

Melius said: “We know a significant number of people died before the WTCHP was set up; it’s likely to be in the hundreds. There are also probably hundreds of people outside the program who are sick and may have died.”

The WTCHP has certified 37,000 people as suffering from serious respiratory or digestive illnesses, cancer, or a combination. Most of those registered are from New York City and 82% are male.

Spring said: “There are health conditions covered in the program that will take years to develop and we don’t think the cancers we are seeing now is the end of it. It’s such an unprecedented disaster. It’s mind-boggling to think not just about the day but about the ripple effect on people’s health.”

The Manhattan borough president, Gale Brewer, told the Guardian she had “heard very high numbers” of people were at risk of dying from exposure to World Trade Center-related toxins.

“Many more than 3,000 or 4,000,” she said. “It’s very sad. I believe it will eclipse the number who died on 9/11 itself, because so many people were on the pile, or came to help, and so many people worked in the area. We are going to be dealing with this for years and years.”

In 2014, Brewer wrote to New York governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, asking them to approve a plan to build a monument to those sickened and killed since 9/11, to be installed near where the towers stood.

The area now hosts the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and is dominated by monuments built where each tower stood and engraved with the names of those who died in the atrocity.

Brewer is lobbying for a competition to design a separate monument for those who have been sickened. It will not have names, because of lack of clarity about cause of death in all cases and because it will also be designed to offer solace to those still living but sick, she said.

“It needs to be universal,” she said.

She has had no formal response from either Christie or Cuomo. But when she collared Cuomo at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia this summer, she said, he told her: “Sounds good.”

Brewer is hopeful of adding the monument before the 16th anniversary of 9/11.

Jerrold Nadler, the US congressman whose district includes the World Trade Center site, said of the post-9/11 health crisis: “It’s ghastly, it’s horrible, the people will die early and I feel very frustrated because it was preventable.”

9/11 health crisis: death toll from illness nears number killed on day of attacks