Federal red tape delays benefits

Washington holds up money for survivors of fallen firefighters and police

WASHINGTON -- It was two years ago this week that Firefighter Michael Childress' heart failed at the Level Cross firehouse in rural Randolph County.

Childress, 48, had gone into a back room to watch television while a pal fetched hot dogs for supper. His teenage daughter stopped by the station and found him slumped in his chair.

Childress didn't die after being overtaken by flames or smothered by smoke, but, under the law, he died in the line of duty and should therefore be due nearly $300,000 in federal benefits. His wife, Teresa, hasn't seen any of it.

Nationwide, more than 200 survivors of firefighters and police officers who died on the job, including several from North Carolina, continue to wait for death benefits that Congress and President Bush approved more than three years ago. Just two families have been approved; 40 others have been denied.

The denials and delays have outraged advocates for fallen firefighters and police officers. They say the U.S. Department of Justice is stonewalling payouts for legitimate benefits by taking too long to process cases and demanding that families turn over years of medical records.

"The Justice Department appears to be intentionally misinterpreting the intention of Congress," said U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, the Lillington Democrat who sponsored the bill, called the Hometown Heroes Act.

"It's time for people in the Justice Department to stop dragging their feet and putting up roadblocks."

Teresa Childress, who was in Raleigh this weekend for an annual memorial service to fallen firefighters, said she never expected the bureaucracy to be so difficult.

"It's been a long experience," Childress said of her quest for benefits. "It's been a lot of waiting and waiting and waiting."

Domingo S. Herraiz, director of the Justice agency that oversees the program, said in a statement Friday that the applications are "unique and require different levels of review and outreach."

He added, though, that the agency pledges to have answers within 90 days of receiving "all necessary information."

"The Department of Justice is committed to assisting public safety officers, their families, and their agencies throughout times of tragedy," Herraiz said in the statement.

Firefighters crushed by burning structures and police officers shot by suspects earn much of the public attention given to emergency responders killed in the line of duty. But Michael Childress' cause of death, a heart attack, is much more common in his profession.

National statistics from the U.S Department of Homeland Security show stress and overexertion are the top killer of firefighters. It is the No. 2 killer for law enforcement officers, behind car wrecks.

A study published this spring in the New England Journal of Medicine said firefighters are more prone to heart attacks after responding to emergency calls.

For a long time, deaths after an emergency incident didn't earn survivors federal benefits.

"Firefighters have been suffering," said Chief Edward Brinson of Fairview Fire Department in Wake County, president of the N.C. Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

"Worse yet," he said, "their families have been suffering."

This was the kind of loophole Congress wanted to fix, Etheridge said.

A constituent told him in 2002 about a Lumberton firefighter who had died of a heart attack at the scene of a fire. That man's family received nothing from the Public Service Officers Benefit, a federal program run by the U.S. Department of Justice.

But Etheridge and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont teamed up to push through a change. The new law was signed in 2003 by President Bush in a White House ceremony.