re: #70 lawhawk

You have some firefighters and police who were on duty for part of the time while working on the Pile and then volunteered in their off-duty time to work on recovery efforts. Same goes with other people who ended up working in the vicinity to assist in the relief and recovery efforts. That complicates matters even further.

What could have stemmed this situation from devolving into a mess would have been to set aside a VCF-style fund for relief/rescue personnel alongside the general Sept 11 VCF. That didn’t happen, and creating a new fund in this current political atmosphere is toxic.

It’s also a sad day because we’ve gone from a situation where President Bush was willing to give the city/state whatever resources were needed - and directed those comments to Sen. Schumer, to a situation where the GOP is pretty much telling the 9/11 responders to drop dead.

It’s pathetic.

My memory is vague on this, but I think officials (C. Whitman??) at one point downplayed the hazards associated with the airborne exposures. The whole thing stinks, and lends credence to any paranoid nonsense that’s out there.