Reply #49: If you lose your sense of humor, life would be... a lot harder

[ryan_cats]

The FDNY didn't follow its own guidelines and had only 600 respirators for more than 11,200 uniformed members when the twin towers fell Sept. 11, Carboy said.

In a Feb. 5 deposition, he admitted he didn't know the FDNY had a program until well after 9/11, or that he (Tennyson Headley) was responsible for making sure firefighters were trained to use the masks.

I will take you at your word that the above statements are true. While it sounds extremely negligent to have only 600 respirators out of 11,200, I can see their thinking and it sounds like a typical budget situation. Before 9/11, would you ever think you needed even 2000 firefighters at once? What were FDNY's guidelines for the number of respirators per 100 firefighters? Obviously it would be nice to have one for everyone but it would be a waste of money because if there's a situation where we need all 11,200 firefighters, we are so screwed but to be serious, there's no reason to have that many. Keep in mind, they don't just sit there, they have to be maintained, tested and so on. So they probably have actuarial tables that say for x amount of firefighters, there will be y amount of respirators.

Is there a study of the folks that were at ground zero to see if they're getting sicker at a statistically significant amount? There has to be one but I can see our gov might not want to know those numbers but there's probably at least one study going on in a university or at least I hope so.

As for those paper masks like surgeons use? Are they actually going to stop say, mercury? Of course not. If you've ever worn one, they don't exactly have an airtight seal to your face. They are better than nothing, they do filter larger particles and you can make them fit better by bending that little metal strip above your nose. If I lived in NYC, I would probably have worn one. I live in the Sacramento area and in the 70s, they burned the rice fields and it literally darkened the sky and I wish I'd had one then. Luckily they stopped burning the fields, it was nasty so I can somewhat imagine what the citizens of NYC went through, except they had to live with it for a lot longer than we did and I don't even want to think about what all was in the air. I remember a big deal being made of these air monitoring stations that they had around NYC. I think they were chained to a light pole. Did anyone ever publish the results of those monitors?

I learned something today, the respirators firefighters use is an SCBA which, thanks to my google-fu, stands for self contained breathing apparatus and from what I read, 35 minutes is how long it lasts. Now, I know it would take me at least that long to get to the 30th floor let alone any higher.
From, and it is an interesting read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-contained_breathing_apparatus
This brings up an interesting point. Were the 600 devices they had respirators like painters wear or were they the SCBA with its own air supply or a mixture of both? They should have at least had one respirator per firefighter, they're not that expensive and they don't require a lot of maintenance but I bet it's a bean counter and not a firefighter who determines these things.

But about the judge ... apparently you haven't done a search to find out what all is being said about this guy in cyberspace, but I can assure you it isn't pretty. I can never remember whether its libel or slander that isn't prosecutable if the allegations are true.

People that are found guilty always blame the judge, the prosecutor, their attorney and the kitchen sink so I don't know what you're reading about that judge. Now, if he's been sanctioned, and/or sued by the ACLU, then I might believe what people write. Lets start at an easy place, who appointed him? Was it the President, Guiliani or who, w?

Finally:
Anybody with two neurons to bang together could look at that mess and know the air was NOT safe to breathe. Why in the hell does anybody listen to these people ... or vote for them ...

I think all the first responders and rescuers and all the people that worked at ground zero are heroes so I would bet money that if they said the air was unsafe to breathe, they'd still continue to work. I read from somewhere who said he was part of the recovery and he said he and all the others wore their respirators (I believe these are not SCBAs, they're like the masks painters use with two filter cartridges). He wrote that they were a pain since it was hard to talk with them on so they were constantly putting them on and taking them off. If I find it again, I'll post his post.