By Dorian Block
Daily News (New York)
Copyright 2008 Daily News
 Photo courtesy of N.Y.C. Fire Dept Family and colleagues attend a plaque dedication Tuesday for Deborah Reeve, a Ground Zero paramedic who died of lung cancer in 2006. |
NEW YORK — The family of a paramedic who worked for months in the Ground Zero morgue to give closure to the families of 9/11 victims is still looking for their own closure two years after her death.
Emergency Medical Technician Deborah Reeve worked for several months sorting body parts at the morgue following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In addition to exposing herself to death on a massive scale, she breathed asbestos fibers that her doctors say killed her.
On Tuesday, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, dozens of her colleagues, her husband and fellow paramedic, David, and her two children, Elizabeth, 12, and Mark, 8, met at Jacobi Medical Center’s EMT Station 20 to dedicate a plaque in her honor.
“We understand your pain is not diminished,” Scoppetta told her family in the locker room Reeve visited daily. “Debbie’s sacrifice, and of course yours, is recognized.”
The turnout impressed David Reeve, but the sentiments were not enough for the man who buried his wife of 14 years at age 41.
Reeve fought for medical coverage during her last year of life as she battled mesothelioma, an aggressive form of lung cancer, and she was the first EMT worker to receive a $30,000-a-year disability compensation.
Her funeral was paid for by the Fire Department — her death was classified as one in the administrative line of duty.
But her husband and children were left $90,000 in debt from medical bills after she died.
“I am angry at the way the state, city, the federal government have not taken responsibility,” said David Reeve. “My wife is the tip of the iceberg. Someone has to ‘fess up to what happened.
“Whatever governmental agency is responsible, people have gotten sick because of it. People have died because of it. We are not clamoring for millions of dollars. All these people, they just want the health care necessary.”
“They didn’t have a 110-story building fall on them, but they didn’t play chicken. They didn’t run away,” Reeve added. “There was a job to do, and they did it.”
Others in attendance agreed.
“This is not just one person, an anomaly. People are sick,” said Marianne Pizzitola, president of the FDNY EMS Retirees Association, who helped Reeve fight for her compensation.
“A death in the administrative line of duty — what the hell is that?”
Reeve said he hurts when he hears of new 9/11 workers diagnosed with disease caused by Ground Zero, but he is too busy working as a paramedic and learning how to care for his daughter, who is growing up without a mother.
“She’s looking more like her mother every day,” he said. “Try as I might, I do good, but I can’t do what she would have done.”