Safety officers denied on-duty death benefits

Bill Dedman Investigative reporter • Profile • E-mail

BOSTON — More than three years after President Bush signed a law granting federal benefits to families of firefighters, police officers and EMTs who die of heart attacks and strokes on the job, not a dollar has been paid. The U.S. Justice Department has denied all 34 claims that have been decided, and has yet to act on more than 200 others, MSNBC.com has learned.

In the Hometown Heroes Act of 2003, Congress said that heart attacks and strokes on the job should be presumed to be line-of-duty deaths, making survivors eligible for federal benefits.

"I think the Department of Justice has intentionally misinterpreted the intent of Congress and the president," the sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., told MSNBC.com on Wednesday.

The Department of Justice confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that no claims have yet been paid, while 34 have been denied and about 206 are pending. A spokeswoman said the delays are caused by the complexity of the cases, not by any disagreement with the intent of the law.

The denials come to light as a new study demonstrates that firefighters are at much higher risk of heart attacks when fighting fires or responding to alarms. In the study to be published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that firefighters face up to 100 times their normal risk of heart attack while working at a fire.

About 11 of the 34 Hometown Heroes claims denied so far were filed by the families of law enforcement officers, according to the Fraternal Order of Police, which also got its numbers this week from the Justice Department.

Most of the remaining denied claims have been filed by families of firefighters. The Justice Department didn't say whether any claims by families of emergency medical workers have been denied.

‘Nonroutine strenuous activity’
At least some of the denials were based on Justice Department judgment that some of the duties the firefighters were performing at the time of their deaths do not meet the law's requirement of "nonroutine strenuous activity."

Courtesy of French family Cordell "Cory" French, a volunteer firefighter in Towanda, Kansas, died at 44 after a training exercise.

In Kansas, 44-year-old volunteer firefighter Cordell "Cory" French died of a heart attack on Aug. 28, 2004, in the small town of Towanda, east of Wichita. His wife, Kelly, said he had been carrying hoses during a training exercise in the high school parking lot that morning, then collapsed at home that afternoon. She said the Justice Department told her last week that her claim was denied, because his work was "non-strenuous activity."

"He contributed many, many, many hours as a volunteer to that department," Kelly French said. "He was awarded firefighter of the year many times. That day he went to work as a volunteer. He loved it. He was an extremely healthy man. If he was in training, and working with the hoses, that is a strenuous duty."

In New York, the claim by the family of one volunteer firefighter was denied because he had responded to a call but hadn't actually fought the fire, and his duties were therefore "nonstrenuous," said Dave Finger, director of government relations for the National Volunteer Fire Council. He said his account was based on an e-mail from the firefighter's family.

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