[quote]JeffR wrote:
I honestly don’t know. However, I’ll bet they weren’t.[/quote]
Why would you bet that?
[quote]JeffR wrote:
I distinctly remember the Firefighters cheering wildly when Rudy appeared in the days after 9/11.[/quote]
Heat of the moment…they probably would have cheered anyone who stood up and said anything remotely decent
[quote]JeffR wrote:
He gave them x amount of days. They refused to move. Rudy wanted them out for safety purposes. He explained it. They still wouldn’t move.
He sent the cops to escort them away. Fists flew and the unions have been mad ever since.[/quote]
It wasn’t for safety reasons, he wanted to speed up the process using a “scoop and dump” strategy whilethe Firefighters wanted to recover their fallen brothers.
—In November 2001, our members were continuing the painful, but necessary, task of searching Ground Zero for the remains of our fallen brothers and the thousands of innocent citizens that were killed, because precious few of those who died in the terrorist attacks had been recovered at that point.
Prior to November 2001, 101 bodies or remains of fire fighters had been recovered. And those on the horrible pile at Ground Zero believed they had just found a spot in the rubble where they would find countless more that could be given proper burial.
Nevertheless, Giuliani, with the full support of his Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, decided on November 2, 2001, to sharply reduce the number of those who could search for remains at any one time. There had been as many as 300 fire fighters at a time involved in search and recovery, but Giuliani cut that number to no more than 25 who could be there at once.
In conjunction with the cut in fire fighters allowed to search, Giuliani also made a conscious decision to institute a “scoop-and-dump” operation to expedite the clean-up of Ground Zero in lieu of the more time-consuming, but respectful, process of removing debris piece by piece in hope of uncovering more remains.
Mayor Giuliani’s actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Our Local presidents at the time attempted to meet with the Mayor to stop this despicable treatment of those who perished, but he refused to even see them face-to-face.
The scoop-and-dump continued. And when hundreds of family members of the fallen joined with our affiliate leadership and members to protest Giuliani’s decision, he ordered senior officers of the New York Police Department to arrest 15 of our FDNY brothers, including a number of local elected IAFF leaders.
Giuliani modified his policy after the protest because public opinion was so strongly with our members. Ultimately, he was forced to put the fire fighters back on the pile. Our protests were later proven justified as more bodies were ultimately recovered and those families given a chance for some closure and a decent burial.
Giuliani argued that the change was for our own safety, but his argument was empty and without substance. Fire fighters had been on that pile since minutes after the twin towers fell â¿¿ why all of a sudden, after nearly two months working on the pile, was Giuliani concerned about fire fighter safety?----
[quote]JeffR wrote:
Rudy was in a no-win situation. Sounds like he chose safety. If I know those guys, they would have continued digging indefinitely. Rudy had to make a call and he made it.[/quote]
It had nothing to do with safety, that much is obvious
[quote]JeffR wrote:
The other crap “moving headquarters into the WTC was bad” and so forth is just a waste of time to discuss.
[/quote]
Waste of time?
I think the fact that Rudy went against the advice of experts and placed the emergency command center in the WTC which had long been identified as a target for terrorists as well as actually having been attacked by terrorists…not to mention the huge amounts of diesel fuel kept in the building which were ultimately responsible for the buildings collapse.
Who in their right mind places a cities emergency command center IN a building that contained huge amounts of diesel fuel as well as being a target for terror attacks?
A moron, not a “terrorist expert”…not to mention a liar who blamed someone else only to have the “scapegoat” produce evidence than Guilani was lying…
Then you have the radios used by emergency workers, which had been found to be faulty in 93’ WTC terror attacks but despite numerous protests and requests Guiliani did not upgrade…ultimately found responsible for many of the emergency workers’ deaths …
Then you have the following, taken from Wiki
—Giuliani has been subject to increased criticism for downplaying the health effects of the air in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the Ground Zero.[83] He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. He said, in the first month after the attacks, “The air quality is safe and acceptable.”[84] However, in the weeks after the attacks, the United States Geological Survey identified hundreds of asbestos hot spots of debris dust that remained on buildings. By the end of the month the USGS reported that the toxicity of the debris was akin to that of drain cleaner.[85]It would eventually be determined that a wide swath of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn had been heavily contaminated by highly caustic and toxic materials.[85][86] The city’s health agencies, such as the Department of Environmental Protection, did not supervise or issue guidelines for the testing and cleanup of private buildings. Instead, the city left this responsibility to building owners.[85]
Firefighters, police and their unions, have criticized Giuliani over the issue of protective equipment and illnesses after the attacks.[83]An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said that cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.[87] The Executive Director of the National Fraternal Order of Police reportedly said of Giuliani: “Everybody likes a Churchillian kind of leader who jumps up when the ashes are still falling and takes over. But two or three good days don’t expunge an eight-year record.” [88] Sally Regenhard, said, “There’s a large and growing number of both FDNY families, FDNY members, former and current, and civilian families who want to expose the true failures of the Giuliani administration when it comes to 9/11.” She told the New York Daily News that she intends to “Swift Boat” Giuliani.[89]
A May 14, 2007 New York Times article, “Ground Zero Illness Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy,” gave the interpretation that thousands of workers at Ground Zero have become sick and that “many regard Mr. Giuliani’s triumph of leadership as having come with a human cost.” The article reported that Giuiliani seized control of the cleanup of Ground Zero, taking control away from experienced federal agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He instead handed over responsibility to the “largely unknown” city Department of Design and Construction. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed.[90] The New York Times faulted his decision-making on the post September 11 cleanup of the World Trade Center site, in the lead editorial of the May 22, 2007 issue. Additionally, the Times took Giuliani to task for his handling of worker safety at the site and the issue of first responder health problems. [91]
Giuliani wrote to the city’s Congressional delegation and urged that the city’s liability for Ground Zero illnesses be limited, in total, at $350 million. Two years after Mayor Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1 billion to a special insurace fund to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.[92]
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is contemplating calling Giulani to testify before a Senate committee on whether the government failed to protect recovery workers from the effects of polluted Ground Zero air.[93][94]
Matt Taibbi wrote an article for the June 14, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone, blaming Giuliani for rushing the recovery effort and setting a poor example for recovery workers [95].
In June of 2007, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency Christie Whitman reportedly stated that the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but that she had been blocked by Giuliani. She stated that she believed that the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. [23]—
Rudy should not be allowed to run on 9/11, if he is not hammered by his opponents on his failings surrounding 9/11 then I will be shocked and will begin counting down to the Apocalypse…
