Cleanup Safety At Issue
UFA Wants Giuliani On 9/11 Hot Seat

By ARI PAUL

Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy last week called on former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to tell Congress why so many firefighters responding to the 9/11 attacks have suffered debilitating and sometimes fatal diseases.

STEVE CASSIDY: Rudy negligent on respirators.

"Six years later no one has been made to answer for this," Mr. Cassidy said in a statement.

Whitman Takes Heat

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, questioned former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman June 25. Some local worker rights advocates blamed her for not adequately disclosing the occupational hazards pile workers faced. For firefighters, the big problem was that they did not have respirators when working at the World Trade Center site, a situation believed to have caused some to contract pulmonary illnesses such as restrictive airway dysfunction and sarcoidosis.

David Neuman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, said that first-responders should have been supplied with respirators according to Public Employee Safety and Health Bureau regulations.

RUDY GIULIANI: Getting heat from fire unions.

He added that health statistics for Firefighters showed higher rates of illnesses after the attacks.

"You cannot wear respirators when you don't have them," Mr. Cassidy's statement said. "New York City Firefighters did not get respirators because the Giuliani administration failed to provide them and ensure that those working on the pile had them and used them."

Shin Inouye, a spokesman for Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, said the New York Congressman had no immediate plans to question the former Mayor.

'Focus on Feds' Response'

"Our focus right now is on the Federal government response," he said.

Mr. Cassidy's call comes at a politically volatile time as Mr. Giuliani seeks the Republican nomination for President. The Washington-based International Association of Firefighters, with which the UFA is affiliated, is currently producing a video that attempts to publicize Mr. Giuliani's alleged mistreatment of firefighters that it plans to distribute to its locals.

Catherine McVay Hughes, who chairs the WTC Committee of Community Board 1 in Manhattan, welcomed the union's proposal, adding that as a resident of lower Manhattan she felt that the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene under Mr. Giuliani's leadership did not adequately address the hazardous environmental effects the 9/11 attacks caused.

"We would be interested in him going before the same committee and being asked the same tough questions," said Ms. Hughes of Mr. Giuliani. "It would be nice for him to be held accountable."