As Ground Zero cases go to trial, respirator rule is revealed
BY Alison Gendar
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, February 28th 2010, 4:00 AM

A lawyer in two Ground Zero sickness cases green-
lighted for trial says he has a smoking gun: buried
city documents that prove firefighters should have
gotten respirators.

The papers emerged in a veritable mountain of files
the city turned over to workers who believe they
were sickened by toxins after the 9/11 terrorist
attacks.

Lawyer Andrew Carboy, whose firm represents more
than 600 firefighters, said the FDNY had rules on
the book requiring Bravest be equipped with
respirators before Sept. 11.

But memos showing that weren't handed over until
this summer - in a data dump of 3 million
documents - five years after the legal battle began.
"They provide everyone with helmets, with bunker
gear, with [air] packs. They could have done the
same with respirators, and they withheld the
documents saying they had a program to do it,"
Carboy said.

Carboy's firm represents Firefighters Frank Malone
and the late Raymond Hauber, whose cases are
among a dozen picked to go to trial, starting in May.

Four were chosen from more than 9,000 by a federal
judge, four by the city, and four by plaintiffs'
lawyers. More than $1 billion in damages hinge on
the outcome.

To show the city is liable, Carboy plans to wield
memos about the FDNY's "respiratory protection
program," which was supposed to provide
respirators for "reasonably foreseeable emergency
situations" like building collapses.

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.

A 2003 FDNY memo called for the head of safety and
health for the department, Tennyson Headley, to be
canned in part because of the dysfunctional
respirator program. But Headley is still on the FDNY
payroll.