Contrast on Post-9/11 Deaths

Contrast on Post-9/11 Deaths

The Police Department last week unveiled the latest additions to the Police Memorial Wall, including the names of eight cops who died from 9/11-related illnesses.

In doing so, it offered an inadvertent reminder of the Fire Department's decision not to include its members who died of similar causes on the agency's wall commemorating those who lost their lives in the line of duty.

Two months ago, the FDNY's Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters cited a long tradition of restricting inscriptions on the Wall of Honor to "line-of-duty deaths." By those he meant members of the agency who either died immediately as a result of job actions they took or suffered severe injuries at the time to which they later succumbed.

Those advocating for those who died of post-9/11 illnesses to be included on the wall, including the Uniformed Firefighters Association, contend that they are not unlike those in the second category. The primary difference, they say, is that a firefighter who suffered grievous injuries battling a blaze may have died a week or six weeks later, while the post-9/11 victims may have lived for years before their exposure to toxins at the World Trade Center site extracted its deadly toll.

Although the Fire Department hasn't said so, it may believe that such cases among firefighters and Emergency Medical Service personnel are more analogous to those of firefighters who enjoyed long careers in the department but after retiring died of lung cancer. If they were not smokers, it would be reasonable to presume that they contracted the disease as a result of long exposure to toxins, from the scenes of fires to the diesel fumes that accumulate in the quarters they share with their engines. Those employees, however, are not included on the Wall of Honor, even though a strong case could be made that their deaths were directly attributable to the conditions in which they worked.

But a similar case could be made in the NYPD that those who die after retirement of heart attacks may have had the origin of their afflictions in the nature of their jobs, with the attendant stress combined with situations in which they must quickly move from riding in a patrol car to taxing physical activity.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly apparently made the decision that the post-9/11 rescue and recovery work was a unique circumstance not comparable to the normal toll taken by cops' everyday activities, and that the selflessness with which department members threw themselves into the work deserved special recognition even if their deaths did not fit the textbook definition of line of duty.

This is obviously an individual agency decision, one with which Fire Commissioner Nick Scoppetta has not concurred.

But we wonder what the FDNY is defending in barring Wall of Honor status to the post-9/11 casualties, and from whom? Does it imagine that any of the families of the 343 department members who lost their lives on 9/11 would protest giving equal recognition on the wall to those who labored for months, in many cases, to try to find the remains of their loved ones, without regard to their own health? That's hard to believe.

The department may worry that it would set a precedent under which any family that lost an employee whose job duties were a contributing factor in his or her eventual death would seek equal billing. But it would seem to us that there is a general consensus that the response to 9/11 was a singular occurrence, one permitting an exception to normal policy to acknowledge that in their own way, these employees were as heroic as those who perished on the day the World Trade Center's Twin Towers collapsed.