By Barbara Barrett
The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)  
Copyright 2007 The News and Observer  

WASHINGTON — It was two years ago this week that Firefighter Michael Childress' heart failed at the Level Cross firehouse in rural Randolph County.

Childress, 48, had gone into a back room to watch television while a pal fetched hot dogs for supper. His teenage daughter stopped by the station and found him slumped in his chair.

Childress didn't die after being overtaken by flames or smothered by smoke, but, under the law, he died in the line of duty and should therefore be due nearly $300,000 in federal benefits. His wife, Teresa, hasn't seen any of it.

Nationwide, more than 200 survivors of firefighters and police officers who died on the job, including several from North Carolina, continue to wait for death benefits that Congress and President Bush approved more than three years ago. Just two families have been approved; 40 others have been denied.

The denials and delays have outraged advocates for fallen firefighters and police officers. They say the U.S. Department of Justice is stonewalling payouts for legitimate benefits by taking too long to process cases and demanding that families turn over years of medical records.

"The Justice Department appears to be intentionally misinterpreting the intention of Congress," said U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, the Lillington Democrat who sponsored the bill, called the Hometown Heroes Act.

"It's time for people in the Justice Department to stop dragging their feet and putting up roadblocks."

Teresa Childress, who was in Raleigh this weekend for an annual memorial service to fallen firefighters, said she never expected the bureaucracy to be so difficult.

"It's been a long experience," Childress said of her quest for benefits. "It's been a lot of waiting and waiting and waiting."

Domingo S. Herraiz, director of the Justice agency that oversees the program, said in a statement Friday that the applications are "unique and require different levels of review and outreach."

He added, though, that the agency pledges to have answers within 90 days of receiving "all necessary information."

"The Department of Justice is committed to assisting public safety officers, their families, and their agencies throughout times of tragedy," Herraiz said in the statement.

Firefighters crushed by burning structures and police officers shot by suspects earn much of the public attention given to emergency responders killed in the line of duty. But Michael Childress' cause of death, a heart attack, is much more common in his profession.

National statistics from the U.S Department of Homeland Security show stress and overexertion are the top killer of firefighters. It is the No. 2 killer for law enforcement officers, behind car wrecks.

A study published this spring in the New England Journal of Medicine said firefighters are more prone to heart attacks after responding to emergency calls.

For a long time, deaths after an emergency incident didn't earn survivors federal benefits.

"Firefighters have been suffering," said Chief Edward Brinson of Fairview Fire Department in Wake County, president of the N.C. Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

"Worse yet," he said, "their families have been suffering."

This was the kind of loophole Congress wanted to fix, Etheridge said.

A constituent told him in 2002 about a Lumberton firefighter who had died of a heart attack at the scene of a fire. That man's family received nothing from the Public Service Officers Benefit, a federal program run by the U.S. Department of Justice.

But Etheridge and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont teamed up to push through a change. The new law was signed in 2003 by President Bush in a White House ceremony.

It says that if an emergency responder dies of a heart attack or stroke within 24 hours of duty, there is a "presumption" that the person died in the line of duty. The law includes exceptions for those with desk jobs, focusing on people who respond physically to emergency calls.

But Etheridge and other critics say the administration has done just the opposite of Congress' intentions, requiring families to submit years of medical records to prove their cases.

"It's creating a lot of hardships on a lot of families," said Bill Webb, executive director of the Congressional Fire Services Institute in Washington. "Right now, it's putting the burden right back on family members, which should not be the case."

Medical records often show that deceased victims of heart attack or stroke had previous risk factors, according to the Bureau of Justice Assistance in the U.S. Department of Justice. But the bureau has also tried to relax its interpretation to help victims.

On Oct. 20, 2006, sheriff's Deputy Jeremy V. Reynolds was en route to a call of shots fired in Oakland, Tenn. He tried to avoid something in the road, lost control and crashed his vehicle in a wreck so fiery that his wife had only parts of her husband to bury.

To Jackie Reynolds, the case for job-related death benefits was simple.

But a few months ago, a case manager called her from Washington, asking for 15 years of medical history to prove Jeremy Reynolds didn't suffer a heart attack from a previous condition.

The couple, who met when both worked law enforcement in Morehead City, hadn't even been married 15 years.

"I don't understand," Jackie Reynolds said of the federal agency. "I'm not their enemy. I'm asking them for what [the benefits program] is there for. My husband wasn't doing anything but what he took an oath to do."

She still hasn't heard an answer about his benefits.

The benefits, set now at $295,194 per death, could add up to $59 million if the more than 200 cases pending now were all approved.

A lot may be coming toward North Carolina. At least a dozen firefighters and law enforcement officers have died of heart attacks or strokes since 2005.

When Mike Childress' heart stopped beating in the Level Cross fire station, his wife was shocked. He'd had a heart attack more than a year earlier, but he passed all his fitness tests and was approved to fight fires.

He was buried in full gear just a few weeks before his daughter's high school graduation.

Teresa Childress filled out reams of paperwork, had her husband's boss send in medical records to Washington and then this winter had to send in more medical records. All this, to prove that Childress' heart attack came during the line of duty.

Friday night, Childress went to a dinner at Raleigh's Station 1 honoring her husband and other firefighters. She stood outside at nightfall clutching a candle in his memory.

To her, he felt every bit as much a hero as other fallen firefighters.

Childress said she understands that federal bureaucracies take time. But two years after her husband's death, the wait frustrates her.

"If I think about it, it's going to stress me again," she said.