The House on Friday passed a bill that aims to keep aid flowing to thousands of people who still suffer from physical and psychic damage stemming from the terrorist attack that knocked down the World Trade Center's twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
It's a bill that matters to dozens of Western New Yorkers: state police officers, firefighters and the men and women of the National Guard who responded to the attack.
They spent days breathing the noxious fumes and lung-clogging dust that filled the skies of lower Manhattan. And now some of them are getting sick, often with rare forms of cancer.
Those people could not be happier that the House on Friday voted to replenish a fund that's set to run out of money next year.
"I think it's extremely important," said Jennifer Czarnecki of Hamburg, an 18-year veteran of the State Police who served in New York after 9/11 and who now suffers from a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer.