By Thomas Tracy and John Annese
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — The union representing FDNY firefighters is demanding answers after City Hall officials discovered 68 boxes of information on the dangers of Sept. 11 toxins despite claiming for years they couldn’t find any records on what authorities knew about Ground Zero health hazards.
“For years, our members made life-and-death medical decisions based on the city’s repeated assurances that the air was safe and there were ‘no records,’” said Andrew Ansbro, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association.
“Now we learn there were tens of thousands of pages locked away — pages that could have changed treatment plans, sped up diagnoses, and maybe even saved lives.”
“Who gave the order to hide them? Who knew? And how many firefighters died because these documents never saw the light of day?” he added.
The day of the terrorist attack, 343 FDNY members died when the towers fell and since then another 400 members have died of 9/11-related illnesses linked to Ground Zero toxins.
Ansbro, who said the existence of the documents revealed “a betrayal of the men and women who risked everything on 9/11,” is demanding sworn depositions from city officials.
“We will not allow one page to be buried, redacted, or sanitized. If the city can hide information that kills firefighters once, they can do it again — and we will not stand for it,” he said. “We want the truth — every last bit of it — for the firefighters we’ve lost, for those still battling their illnesses, and for every family who has suffered the unthinkable.”
Lawyer Andrew Carboy, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, D-Manhattan, and reps from 911 Health Watch went to the Department of Environmental Protection offices the week of Nov. 17 to go through more than 20 of the boxes that were ready to be reviewed.
Carboy, who represents 911 Health Watch, has been battling the city in court to have the documents released. Late last year, the city’s Corporation Counsel asked a judge to toss a Freedom of Information Law petition, claiming they had already certified no records were found.
The boxes surfaced after Brewer pushed through legislation ordering the city’s Department of Investigation to launch a probe over what and when the city knew about the toxins that have sickened or killed thousands of first responders.
Law Department spokesman Nicholas Paolucci told the Daily News that the city’s response to the FOIL request “reflected what was true and accurate at the time: DEP couldn’t locate hard copy documents.” He added, “That has since changed and we have a schedule in place to produce documents.”
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