Vincent Caprio 9/11 First Responder & Advocate Shares His Thoughts with CT Insider
Posted on June 12th, 2025 | No Comments »
9/11 forever changed their lives and health. Now the program meant to help faces uncertainty.
By
Staff Writer
June 12, 2025
U.S Sen. Richard Blumenthal (left) and Vincent Caprio (right) recently met in Easton on May 23 to discuss the changes on the 9/11 WTC Health Program.
Courtesy of Vincent Caprio
Longtime volunteer firefighter Curtis Andrews remembers seeing the billowing black smoke coming out of the World Trade Center while rushing down the highway that fateful Sept. 11 morning.
The debris, he recalled, was up to his knees. Andrews was part of a 20-firefighter caravan from North Haven that raced, like many other departments, to lower Manhattan and the area that would become known as “Ground Zero.”
There were fires and buildings with extensive damage. The 1,362-foot South Tower building had been reduced to only about 35 feet. The dense, smokey air made the challenge even harder.
“It was like walking in a fog…Your eyes were getting irritated from all the stuff in it,” Andrews said, noting that he didn’t get a paper respirator until 12 hours into his volunteer work.
Andrews’ job over the next 24 hours included assisting in search and rescue operations, administering food and IVs, and providing support to exhausted and grieving local first responders.
That “fog” they navigated was the visible residue and dust of the collapsed towers, a mixture of over 350 chemical agents, like gasses, glass fibers, jet fuel, asbestos, plastic, pulverized furniture, and other toxic substances. It blanketed the lower parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn in the days and months after the attack, entering residential buildings, schools, and offices, exposing people both indoors and outside.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 400,000 people were exposed to toxic contaminants, risk of physical injury, and emotionally stressful conditions due to 9/11. However, the long-term health impacts of nearly daily exposure to this toxic dust and air weren’t fully realized until years later.
Although nearly 3,000 people lost their lives during the terror attacks, the CDC reports that nearly 80,000 people have been diagnosed with physical and mental health conditions due to their exposure to dust and trauma since then.
Andrews, 65, said he’s had eight skin cancers removed from his head, scalp, face, shoulder and chest, all caused by exposure to the toxic air. He wasn’t the only one – one firefighter in the caravan developed liver cancer and died, and another is still living with the effects of mercury poisoning.
All of Andrews’ cancers were caught early enough because he had free continuous medical monitoring through the federal World Trade Center Health Program, currently serving more than 140,000 people affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, the Pentagon and crash site in Pennsylvania.
“We’re in our 20s, 30s, early 40s and we’re healthy. I was in the best shape of my life, then I got skin cancer,” Andrews said. “I insisted that guys get in and get checked… the more eyes that you can get on you with this stuff, potentially, the quicker you can catch something.”
A health program was eventually put into place to help people like Andrews and has been vital in providing health care coverage to thousands across the US is at risk under the new presidential administration, according to public officials and advocates. Around 20% of the 80-person staff helping administer the program, however, have been laid off in the name of cuts and reinstated after bipartisan public outcry twice since March, but their future still remains unclear. Concerns with staff is also coupled with funding uncertainty as a bill aimed at providing more federal funding is stalled in Congress.
The fight for care
The World Trade Center Health Program was established after a lengthy and arduous federal lobbying effort, despite conversations about the toxic dust’s health effects beginning nearly a month after the attack.
Michael Barasch, a 9/11 survivor and longtime attorney who helps others enrolled in the program, said the federal government launched a couple of early versions of the World Trade Center Health Program in the years after 9/11. Still, they were only funded for limited periods. Advocates and survivors lobbied for expanded access to care over the years as more people reported sudden appearances of complex medical conditions.
The sudden death of NYC Detective James Zadroga, who helped in the recovery efforts and one of Barasch’s clients, is what ultimately led to the creation of the program. Barasch said the previously healthy 34-year-old died of pulmonary fibrosis in 2006. An autopsy revealed glass, asbestos, lead, benzene and other carcinogens in his lungs. This provided the evidence needed to link these health issues to exposure and create a more sustained program.
Former President Barack Obama signed the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 into law, establishing the federal World Trade Center Health Program and reopening the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Five years later, he signed another law to reauthorize the program for 75 years, which would expire in 2090.
Participants receive specialized care at no cost for specific conditions outlined by the Zadroga Act and rulemaking expansions, including acute traumatic injuries, lung and digestive disorders, all cancers, mental health conditions and musculoskeletal issues. They can then receive free care and annual preventative care from medical providers affiliated with the federal health program.
If a person’s condition isn’t already under the certified categories, they can work with their medical providers through the lengthy certification process, thus becoming eligible for treatment. For some, it has taken years to obtain the necessary approvals to access the program despite ongoing health issues due to an already stretched staff.
Although the program doesn’t reimburse members or health care providers for the costs of cancer treatments received before coverage began, they could be eligible for benefits through the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Administered by the Department of Justice, the fund has different eligibility criteria and application requirements, but applicants must have a certified physical health condition to initiate the process.
The program began with over 61,700 participants and has since grown to over 142,000 nationwide, according to the latest available data. Of them, more than 1,500 are Connecticut residents.
“Even though you’re more likely to develop cancer because of your exposure to all these toxins, you’re less likely to die from those cancers if you’re in the health program,” said Barasch, who has helped over 40,000 people enroll in the program. “When you’re diagnosed early, you can start treatment early. So you’re not starting treatment when you’re already at stage four cancer, but instead, you’re starting treatment when you’re stage one or two.”
It was during his routine checkup that retired New York Assistant County Clerk James Rossetti was diagnosed with prostate cancer six months ago.
On that September morning, Rossetti said he heard the first “horrific” explosions from the New York State Supreme Court, a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. The windows shook so violently that they almost caved in from the pressure, and he assumed the explosion came from the federal prison behind the courthouse.
Rossetti said the building went into an immediate lockdown, dismissing all the visitors and people who came in for jury duty. He and the other employees stayed inside the building until around 11 p.m., when it was assumed no more attacks were coming.
“We were getting reports that bridges were going to be bombed and subways were going to be bombed, and obviously none of that occurred, but we didn’t know that at the time,” Rossetti said. “We really thought that we were protecting our employees to the extent possible. Subsequently, we got severely criticized for keeping them there that long.”
A Norwalk resident, Rossetti, said he drove his car to work that day, so he dropped off a few coworkers at Grand Central since the subways were shut down.
He said they all returned to work the Monday after 9/11 to an eerily quiet city covered in dust and debris and with a horrible, burnt odor everywhere. Over the following six months, Rossetti was part of the team that worked to expedite over 2,500 death certificates of those who died in the attacks so families could start collecting benefits to which they were entitled.
Rossetti said it was “brilliant” that the U.S. government established the fund and health programs as a way to help the victims and avoid years of litigation. He hopes to rely on the programs moving forward after his diagnosis six months ago.
Doctors have already removed the cancerous mass, Rossetti said, and the radiologists are working on a treatment plan moving forward.
“If someone has been harmed through no fault of their own, there should be some form of compensation…in my opinion, that’s what the World Trade Center fund does,” he said.
Despite the benefit it brings, participants of health programs have reported lengthy waits as they work to certify their conditions through a bureaucratic rabbit hole.
Easton resident Vincent Caprio estimates that it took him over 1,000 hours to certify his five diagnosed conditions: cancer, respiratory disease, GERD, sinus issues and PTSD.
Caprio was at a conference at the Mariott World Trade Center when he heard the first plane go overhead right before hitting the tower. He said he received training in large disaster and mass casualty situations as a conference organizer and ran out to help direct people escaping the towers or assisting others with injuries to a care triage.
He returned to Ground Zero a few days later and volunteered over 400 hours of cleanup over the next few months. Once he had access to it, the resources the health program offered aided significantly in his recovery journey, particularly in terms of physical and mental health.
“I’m doing well. I’m not the person I was like five years ago,” he said. “I couldn’t even… even talk (about 9/11).”
Caprio added that accessing funds from the bank is often another bureaucratic issue until access is approved.
“However many people they have answering the phone, they need twice as many people,” he said. “I say it all the time – they treat us like defendants in a criminal trial. We’re not your defendants. We’re the plaintiffs. We’re the victims.”
Ongoing cuts
The health program has continued to expand over the years, including under the first Trump Administration, which is why the recent sudden cuts and changes to an already small agency came as a shock to the entire community.
In February, around 16 people, or 20% of the staff, lost their jobs as part of DOGE probationary employee culling to reduce and restructure the federal government. Although all the staff were rehired following public outcry, another round of terminations came in April. This time, however, it was at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, a CDC division focused on work-related illnesses that operates the 9/11 health program.
Of the over 300 cuts made at the institute, 16 health program staff were let go, including Trump-appointed Dr. John Howard, the longtime institute director and administrator of the 9/11 program. The staff was reinstated once again after bipartisan public outcry, but it remains unclear whether their rehiring was permanent.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal‘s office stated that they have not received any updates from the newly appointed Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, after sending him a letter demanding answers regarding the staffing changes.
“Nobody knows whether these doctors are going to be permanently rehired or not, and even if they are, there was already a short staffing of this program,” Barasch said. “It now takes eight months to get an appointment. When you have cancer, eight months can be the difference between life and death.”
The program also still faces a significant budget shortfall, needing $3 billion in immediate federal funding to stabilize operations and meet rising health needs in the years ahead. NBC News reported that a bipartisan bill introduced to fund the program until it expires in 2090 is currently stalled in Congress.
Barasch said since the staffing changes started, more and more people are having difficulty accessing the program and the compensation fund. For example, none of the 508 people he helped enroll in the World Trade Center Health Program had their conditions certified. The Victim Compensation Fund is also providing smaller awards or are being delayed.
In the letter Blumenthal and three other senators sent to Kennedy, legislators stated that the upheaval of the program resulted in over 1,200 patients already receiving coverage that couldn’t be approved due to a lack of staff and leadership.
“They’re not rejected; they’re just no action has been taken on their file, on their application, because there’s nobody there to do it,” Barasch said.
That’s what happened to Stratford resident Ira Bindman, a longtime English teacher and mentor at Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan.
Bindman wasn’t working on the morning of 9/11, finding out about the attack while watching the news at the gym. In the following days, he and the students were relocated to a school in the Bronx during the early cleanup efforts.
They were back in their original building by October, and classes resumed as usual. Bindman said he remembers seeing the dense dust spilling out behind the trucks, driving debris from Ground Zero past his school and out of the city nearly every day.
Over the last 10 years, Bindman has developed multiple skin cancers, like Basal Cell, Squamous Cell and eventually Melanoma.
“I went and had it cut out. But since I had the other cancers and then this very serious cancer, I was sort of freaking out,” he said.
As of a few weeks ago, Bindman, 81, stated that he had received the necessary certifications to apply for and benefit from the compensation fund. He estimates that it took a total of two to three years to obtain the certifications.
However, with the fiscal culling and staffing uncertainty, Bindman is unsure whether any payment from the fund will ultimately be made.
“People have suffered and deserved to be compensated. That money was allocated to compensate people who have had their lives changed,” he said. “A cancer diagnosis is not something to be smeared at. That’s serious stuff that kills you or could.”
Cris Villalonga-Vivoni, also known as CV, is the health equity beat reporter for the Record-Journal and a Report for America corps member since 2022. Originally from Puerto Rico, they have a BA in English from Boston College and an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University. They previously worked as a Field Foundational Fellow at the Windy City Times, a Chicago-based LGBTQ+ newspaper. When not working, they can be found playing board games with friends or cuddling their cat on the couch.
