On December 18, 2015, Congress approved the extension of the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which provides compensation and medical and mental health treatment to first responders and survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. One year later, there are still thousands of people who qualify for the benefits but have not yet signed up.
It is estimated that over 400,000 people were in Lower Manhattan on 9/11 and in the months afterward. Fifteen years later, many survivors are experiencing symptoms of the same life-threatening medical and psychological conditions as the responders who worked in the recovery effort.
When the World Trade Center site remained a search-and-rescue operation rather than a lost cause, I interviewed Craig Garber, a paramedic from Dedham, Mass., while reporting on the many volunteers who rushed to New York to help. As I remember it, Craig was tall, grimey-faced and wearing a yellow hard hat and no respirator. Craig was taking a break from four straight days on "the pile," as the rescuers called Ground Zero.
VOICES of September 11th (VOICES) was awarded a contract from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to promote awareness about the World Trade Center Health Program. The Program provides treatment for medical and mental health conditions experienced by those who were in the NYC disaster area in the days and months following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Under the contract, VOICES will focus their outreach efforts on survivors.
This month, Americans will turn the pages on their calendars and find themselves at the fifteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. For Mary Fetchet, the commemoration will be about more than the day her 24-year-old son, Brad, died in the Twin Towers. On the day the World Trade Center fell, Mary was a clinical social worker employed in Milford, Connecticut. She had attended a conference where the mother of an Oklahoma City victim spoke about her personal loss and the aftermath of the 1995 terrorist attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building there.