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.
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.”
A longtime pastor in Brooklyn, Monsignor Delendick walked through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, arriving shortly after the second plane struck. In the chaos he apparently rode away as a passenger in an ambulance, according to The Tablet, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. He returned after a while and remained at the trade center into the night.
He became the senior chaplain in the Fire Department that day with the death of Father Mychal Judge, who was killed when he was struck by debris. The monsignor “took on an expanded role” in the Fire Department, according to Laura Kavanagh, who was the fire commissioner when he died and noted that he officiated at funerals and memorial services for another 22 years — and was also on hand on happier occasions like promotion ceremonies.
Still fighting for cancer benefits
Twenty-three years after the attacks, my colleague Claire Fahy writes, families are still fighting for recognition and compensation for those who died from cancer that their relatives believe was related to the Sept. 11 attacks.
At issue is a policy that makes people ineligible for federal benefits if they have cancers that were diagnosed before Sept. 11, 2005, four years after the attacks. The federal World Trade Center Health Program, administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says that it takes at least that long for “solid cancers” arising from exposure at ground zero to develop — disorders like brain cancer, lung cancer and stomach cancer that usually involve tumors, as opposed to diseases in the bloodstream like leukemia and lymphoma, for which the latency period is less than one year.
From Silverstein, a memoir
The remembrance at the 9/11 memorial plaza in Lower Manhattan this morning is taking place in the shadow of new buildings. One account of how they took shape comes in a memoir from Larry Silverstein, the self-made real estate developer who signed a 99-year lease on the trade center complex less than two months before the attacks.
As Deborah Sontag wrote in 2006, ground zero became “a mosh pit of stakeholders banging heads over billions in federal aid, tax breaks and insurance proceeds” until whirlwind negotiations smoothed things out ahead of the fifth anniversary of the attacks.
Silverstein, now 93, writes in his book, “The Rising: The 20-Year Battle to Rebuild the World Trade Center,” that he would have had his usual 8:30 a.m. breakfast in the restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower if he had not had a doctor’s appointment that morning. He wanted to postpone it, but his wife reminded him that he had already put it off once.
He was just leaving their apartment uptown when the phone rang. His wife answered, and the voice at the other end said, “Is Mr. Silverstein OK?”
“Why would you ask that?” she said.
The answer was the same as for so many others whose friends or relatives called to relay the news that morning: “Turn on your television set.”
Weather
Expect sunshine with temperatures in the high 70s. For tonight, look for mostly clear skies with temperatures in the low 60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Oct. 3 (Rosh Hashana).
The latest New York news
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Another Amtrak delay: Amtrak’s antiquated electrical system caused another rush-hour disruption on Tuesday. That only made things worse on a day that was already off to a bad start for thousands of city-bound commuters from New Jersey.
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A nominee pulls out: Randy Mastro, Mayor Eric Adams’s choice to be the city’s top lawyer, asked for his nomination to be withdrawn. Mastro, a former prosecutor and aide to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, had little chance of winning approval from the City Council.
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A $175,000 settlement: New York City reached a $175,000 settlement with a Staten Island police officer who said he had been a victim of retaliation for ticketing a friend of a high-ranking police official.
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Indictment in Columbia protest: The Manhattan district attorney filed arson and criminal mischief charges against a Brooklyn lawyer who was arrested in an administration building at Columbia University during protests over the war in Gaza. Prosecutors said he had burned an Israeli flag.
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Tainted chicken case: The former official who ran food services for the New York City Education Department took almost $100,000 in bribes to put tainted chicken tenders back on the lunch menu, prosecutors said. He was given a two-year sentence.
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Leadership changes: Glenn Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art since 1995, will step down next September. And Lincoln Center Theater named Lear deBessonet to be its next artistic director; he will succeed André Bishop, who will retire next June.
Federal agents are looking into a firm run by the brother of two top city officials
People with knowledge of the matter say that federal agents are investigating a possible bribery scheme involving city contracts and a consulting firm run by the brother of two officials in Mayor Eric Adams’s inner circle.
The investigation spilled into public view after federal agents took the phones of the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; the schools chancellor, David Banks; and their younger brother, Terence Banks. Terence Banks recently opened a government-and-community-relations consulting firm, and some of the clients mentioned on his website have been awarded city contracts in recent years.
My colleagues Dana Rubinstein, William K. Rashbaum, Amy Julia Harris, Michael Rothfeld and Bianca Pallaro write that investigators seized the Bankses’ phones because they believed the devices contained evidence of bribery and other possible crimes. The investigation appeared to center on the consulting firm and its clients; an electronic device was seized from someone connected to a company that appeared to be a client of the firm, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Terence Banks retired from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority last year after working as a train service supervisor, a job that would have involved responding to train breakdowns and troubleshooting the causes. He raised money for Adams’s campaign in 2021, bringing in more than $70,000. The campaign paid him $1,633.
Last week, federal agents also seized the phone of Timothy Pearson, a retired police inspector who serves as a senior adviser to the mayor and is one of his closest confidants. Pearson’s responsibilities include helping oversee security contracts at migrant shelters.
METROPOLITAN diary
The stagehand
Dear Diary:
I was sitting on a bench waiting for the M66 after seeing “Orfeo ed Euridice” at the Metropolitan Opera. A tall man in jeans and a black T-shirt sat down next to me.
“Were you just at the opera?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m a stagehand.”
A stagehand! He might as well have said he was Pavarotti. I was in awe. Star-struck.
The set for “Orfeo ed Euridice” consisted of two multistory structures manually pushed by stagehands.
“Were you one of the ‘pushers’?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
I proceeded to pepper him with questions about the set, all of which he politely answered in great detail.
“When I was a child,” he said at one point, “I sang in the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus, even with the likes of Kathleen Battle and Pavarotti.”
“As I got older,” he continued, “I knew I didn’t have the voice for a professional career and went on to other work. About 12 years ago, I found myself missing the Met so much that I became a stagehand and changed careers. I couldn’t be happier being back onstage.”
— Dottie Jeffries
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Francis Mateo and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post The Fire Department’s Painful 9/11 Legacy appeared first on New York Times.
