Still here, Still sick, Still Waiting for help

Throat cancer kills WTC worker

BY MICHAEL WHITE
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU
Tuesday, August 7th 2007, 4:00 AM

A 47-year-old Brooklyn firefighter who worked at the World Trade Center wreckage for a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks has died of throat cancer.

Ray Hauber's relatives and colleagues believe conditions at Ground Zero might have caused the esophageal cancer that killed him Saturday morning.

Hauber, who worked for 17 years at Engine Co. 284 in Dyker Heights, had retired from the FDNY on a disability pension last year, after he was diagnosed with the cancer, friends and family said.

"He was down there with me ... and I don't know if [the cancer] was definitely caused by the Trade Center, but it didn't help," said FDNY colleague Joseph Lapolla, 38, of Staten Island.

"I think in the future, in the next 20 years, we're going to see a lot [of]these cases. He was a young guy, and a nonsmoker. He was strong as an ox, and then he was very fragile when he died."

Hauber is the second Ground Zero worker to die from esophageal cancer this year. Frederick Stuck, also of Staten Island, was a retired city deputy sheriff and Sept. 11 first responder and cleanup worker.

He was 49 when he died Jan. 9, and his family also believes conditions at Ground Zero caused his illnesses.

Reached at his New Jersey home last night, Paul Hauber, 45, described his firefighter brother as a "big kid."

"Always loved to play around. Even when he first got sick he always had a good sense of humor," he said.

The family has planned a wake for Ray Hauber today and tomorrow at Casey McCallum Rice Funeral Home, also known as the South Shore Funeral Home, at 30 Nelson Ave. on Staten Island. A funeral will be held at 10a.m. Thursday at Eltingville Lutheran Church at 300 Genesee Ave., S.I.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/08/07/2007-08-07_throat_cancer_kills_wtc_worker.html

Sept. 11 rescue dog with cancer dies

By VERENA DOBNIK,
Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 26, 9:59 AM ET

apNEW YORK - A black Labrador that burrowed through smoking debris after Sept. 11 and flooded rubble after Hurricane Katrina in search of survivors has died after developing cancer.

Owner Mary Flood had 12-year-old Jake put to sleep Wednesday after a last stroll through the fields and a dip in the creek near their home in Oakley, Utah. Flood said Jake had been in pain, shaking with a 105-degree fever as he lay on the lawn.

No one can say whether the dog would have gotten sick if he hadn't been exposed to the toxic air at the World Trade Center, but cancer in dogs Jake's age is common.

Some owners of rescue dogs who worked at ground zero claim their animals have died because of their work there. But scientists who have spent years studying the health of Sept. 11 search-and-rescue dogs have found no sign of major illness in the animals.

Many human ground zero workers have complained of health problems they attribute to their time at the site: the largest study conducted of about 20,000 ground zero workers reported last year that 70 percent of patients suffer respiratory disease years after the cleanup.

The city earlier this year added to its Sept. 11 death toll a woman who died in 2002 of lung disease, five months after she was caught in the dust cloud of the collapsing twin towers.

The results of an autopsy on Jake's body will be part of a medical study on the Sept. 11 dogs that was started by the University of Pennsylvania more than 5 years ago.

Flood adopted Jake as a 10-month-old puppy. He had been abandoned on a street with a broken leg and a dislocated hip.

"But against all odds he became a world-class rescue dog," said Flood, a member of Utah Task Force 1, a federal search-and-rescue team that looked for human remains at ground zero.

On the evening of the team's arrival in New York, Jake walked into a fancy Manhattan restaurant wearing his search-and-rescue vest and was treated to a free steak dinner under a table.

Flood eventually trained Jake to become one of fewer than 200 U.S. government-certified rescue dogs — an animal on 24-hour call to tackle disasters such as building collapses, earthquakes, hurricanes and avalanches.

After Katrina, Flood and Jake drove from Utah to Mississippi, where they searched for survivors in flooded homes.

In recent years, Jake helped train younger dogs across the country. He showed them how to track scents, even in the snow, and how to look up if the scent was in a tree.

He also did therapy work with children at a Utah camp for burn victims and at senior homes and hospitals.

"He was a great morale booster wherever he went," Flood said. "He was always ready to work, eager to play — and a master at helping himself to any unattended food items."

She said Jake's ashes would be scattered "in places that were important to him," such as his Utah training grounds and the rivers and hills near his home where he swam and roamed.

also

“They didn’t have any airway protection, they didn’t have any skin protection. They were sort of in the worst of it,” said Cynthia Otto, a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania, where researchers launched a study of 97 dogs five years ago.

Although many ground zero dogs have died — some of rare cancers — researchers say many have lived beyond the average life span for dogs and are not getting any sicker than average.

Owners of the dogs dispute the findings, saying there is a definite link between the toxic air and their pets’ health.

Otto has tracked dogs that spent an average of 10 days after the 2001 terrorist attacks at either the trade center site, the landfill in New York where most of the debris was taken, or the heavily damaged Pentagon.

As of last month, she said, 30 percent of the dogs deployed after Sept. 11 had died, compared with 22 percent of those in a comparison group of dogs who were not pressed into service. The difference was not considered statistically significant, Otto said.

But she added: “We have to keep looking.”

A separate study, to be published soon by a doctor at New York’s Animal Medical Center, focused on about two dozen New York police dogs, and comes to similar conclusions.

The results have baffled doctors. A study released last month found that 70 percent of the people who worked at ground zero suffer severe respiratory problems; scientists thought that the dogs might have similar health problems.

Longer noses may serve as filters
The dogs’ owners and scientists have many theories why dogs aren’t showing the same level of illness as people. Their noses are longer, possibly serving as a filter to protect their lungs from toxic dust and other debris, they say. The dogs were at the site an average of several days, while many people who report lung disease and cancer spent months cleaning up after the attacks.

RIP Jake