Long Island 9/11 First Responder Battles Disease, Bureaucracy To Help Others Like Him

WESTBURY, NY — Michael O’Connell had barely been a member of the FDNY for four months when the planes flew into the World Trade Center.

Just 25, O’Connell had joined the NYPD in 1998, and then changed tact and joined the fire department in May of 2001. He was sworn in on May 6, but was still a probationary officer on Sept. 11, having not yet graduated from the fire department’s academy.

O’Connell was at home in Westbury when the attacks happened. He sprang into action, and drove to his firehouse in Queens. Shea Stadium had been turned into a staging area for first responders, and O’Connell and the rest of his firehouse went there, and were then bused into the city.

“We got there just after the towers had collapsed,” O’Connell said. “It was still mayhem. Our guys were covered in debris and dust, the ones that got away. Our job consisted of search and rescue — get down there and start digging and see if you can help.”

O’Connell said he was working on the pile at ground zero until 2 or 3 a.m. the first day. When he finally got back to his firehouse, he said they had implemented new shifts: one day on, working 24-hour shift at ground zero, and then one day off.

“But none of us took days off,” he said.

Though O’Connell was new, he was still a member of the FDNY. And like all New York firefighters, he lost many friends that day.

“It’s surreal. I knew how many people were in the building, but I didn’t realize how many of our guys raced in there in that first hour,” he said. “I lost six guys from my academy class.

“You get a list when you get back to the firehouse 10 pages long of names you recognize,” he added.

For weeks, O’Connell worked on the pile, digging through the rubble looking first for survivors, and then for remains. “When you went down there, you joined in the bucket brigade,” O’Connell said. “You're on top of a pile hoping you don't fall through a void, but you have to dig deep enough to find people.”

One of the things that stuck with O’Connell the most was the sound. The breathing apparatus that firefighters wear, he explained, comes with an alarm that starts to go off if the firefighter falls and is motionless for too long.

“When you went down, that's all you heard were those alarms going off,” O’Connell said. “Those were our brothers underneath that pile. And we couldn't get to them.”

Being a member of the FDNY was O’Connell’s dream job. Being able to help people every day gave him purpose. But his career was short lived.

In 2007, he was diagnosed with sarcoidosis from his time working at ground zero. Sarcoidosis is an auto-immune disease that can cause tissue to swell painfully. O’Connell said his first realization he was sick is when he went to bed and his body swelled overnight.

O’Connell was able to get the disease under control with medication and a change in diet, and returned to work a few weeks later. But the first time he went to a fire and breathed in too much smoke, it caused his disease to flare up again. O’Connell realized that he couldn’t do his job anymore, and was forced to retire from the FDNY.

“I loved the job,” he said. “To this day, it's something I still lack. It's a brotherhood. It's a second family. You go to work with those guys and make sure every single one of you gets home at the end of that tour.”

Though he can’t run into burning buildings anymore, O’Connell is still fighting. After his retirement, he was able to get healthcare payments for his treatments thanks to bills that were passed to protect first responders. But when those protections were in jeopardy a few years later, O’Connell wanted to help.

“Instead of sitting back and hearing there's a team down in Washington fighting for this, I decided to find them,” he said.

O’Connell found the Feal Good Foundation. It’s a Long Island-based organization led by John Feal, himself a 9/11 first responder, that fights for protections for other people who were there that day and are now fighting illnesses. O’Connell and Feal, along with comedian John Stewart, testified in front of Congress many times to secure funding for the healthcare of 9/11 first responders.

They were instrumental in the passage of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, which provides funding for healthcare of 9/11 first responders, as well as getting it extended to 2090.

Today, when O’Connell thinks back, he tries to remember Sept. 12 instead of Sept. 11. The day after the attacks, he says, is when New Yorkers — and the entire country — came together like never before.

O’Connell recalled how, at 3 a.m. on Sept. 12, after hours of working at ground zero, a random stranger let him and other firefighters climb into the back of his pickup truck and drove them back to Flushing.

That feeling — the unity in the aftermath of the attack, when people cared for strangers and helped no matter what — is something O’Connell tries to teach his three children. It’s especially true when he looks at all of the division in the country today.

“People stepped up to try to help,” he said. “That's where we need to be again, without the tragedy of a terrorist attack.”