Politics
The Fire Department’s Painful 9/11 Legacy
Since 2001, the department has lost more than 360 men to 9/11-related illnesses, a number greater than its death toll on Sept. 11.
Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at a sad milestone: The number of firefighters who have died of illnesses related to their work at the World Trade Center in 2001 now exceeds the number of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. We’ll also get details on one of the investigations swirling around Mayor Eric Adams’s administration.
Credit…Anna Watts for The New York Times
When the fire commissioner, Robert Tucker, added 32 names to the memorial wall at the Fire Department headquarters in Brooklyn last week, the department’s post on X was terse: “Since September 11, 2001, the #FDNY has lost more than 360 members to World Trade Center related illnesses.”
What the post left unsaid was the milestone the institution had reached: More firefighters have now died from 9/11-related illnesses than in the attacks that day (343). The Fire Department also says that at least 11,000 of its members have illnesses related to their work on Sept. 11. At least 3,500 have cancer.
A 23rd anniversary, unlike a 10th or a 25th, is not a major one. But the continued growth in illness-related deaths is the latest disconsolate development for firefighters who did what firefighters do when the mission is rescue and recovery — and who paid a price, though not always immediately. As Tucker said last week, “We will be sobered in knowing that those insurmountable losses did not end at the World Trade Center site.”
One of the 32 new names on the Fire Department wall was that of Msgr. John Delendick, who was 74 when he died on Nov. 23 of what the Fire Department called “World Trade Center-related cancer.”
