Statement of Jonathan Sferazo, disabled Union Iron Worker

To the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization, and Procurement

Hearing on 9/11 Health Effects: Federal monitoring and Treatment of
Residents and Responders

Washington, DC

February 28, 2007

Hello everyone, I am honored to have been asked to give testimony today
to the experiences I have had with the September 11^th^, 2001 tragedy.

My name is Jonathan Sferazo, I am a disabled Union Iron Worker from
local 361, Brooklyn, New York. We have created the Metropolitan Area's
Skyline. I responded to the disaster on the morning of 9-12-01. The
Brooklyn Battery Tunnel was our avenue of approach. We opened up West
Street, with the removal of Collapsed Cars and Trucks to the South
Tower. I am typical of other's who stayed approx 29-32 days at the site,
and my medical and psychological conditions are Reactive Airway Disease,
Restrictive Airway Disease, Sinusitis, Continual Lung Infections,
P.T.S.D., Anxiety, Depression, Sleep-apnea, and Gastro-esophageal Reflux
Disease...none of this you would have expected from someone who ran a 5
minute and 30 second time in the mile when I was in school. I never had
a Pulmonological problem prior 9-11 or I would have never been certified
by the N.Y.S. Department of Environmental Conservation for Wild-Land
Search and Rescue. I went to Ground Zero because I wanted to help find
and save Human life.

If I am to be the voice for the responder, then know that I am outraged
by the lack of responsibility and loss of obligation this Administration
has taken towards us. We are clearly being shown that we are expendable.
George Bush came to the Trade Center site and told us "We Will Never
Forget"......Well, we feel he forgot. 

We want to know if those of us who are so severely afflicted have to
loose all we have worked for before we are eligible for Social Services
or will we ever be given what we were promised?

We have heard too many times, "Why weren't you wearing a mask?" Now hear
the answer loud and clear, "Because we were given paper masks that
clogged-up very easily and that was if you could get one, and we
believed in our mayor \[at that time\], members of the C.D.C, members of
the E.P.A. and Christy Todd Whitman who represented government telling
us the air quality was ACCEPTABLE. Also I ask you to put yourself in our
place; fighter jets flying overhead periodically with their sonic boom,
helicopters hovering atop the skyscrapers, emergency whistles going-off
every time an engineer saw a building shift. Then thousands of
responders would run from the Pile toward you, rescue and emergency
vehicles making use of their sirens so others could hear over the loud
equipment noises, military and police personnel all around you, smoke as
thick as pea soup...and then you find a body part. Do you really think
you are concentrating on your health? Especially when your government
has given the message all is acceptable and O.K.?

I am here today because I care and have been through the system in
trying to get my much needed health care and benefits. Marvin Bethea and
I co-founded the Unsung Heroes Helping Heroes along with several others
in 2005 because we knew the donations were going to run-out and we saw
our government doing very little.