Edward Dela Cruz Jr. is vice president of the Northern Marianas Professional Firefighters Union-International Association of Fire Fighters-Local 5335.
EDWARD Dela Cruz Jr., vice president of the Northern Marianas Professional Firefighters Union-International Association of Fire Fighters-Local 5335, is reaching out to former firefighters who have been exposed to Aqueous Film Forming Foam or AFFF.
Dela Cruz said: “It’s an agent of choice for aircraft rescue firefighters or the fire department to be able to fight certain types of fire. For us airport rescue firefighters, we fight against jet fuel fire. If a jet fuel lights and ignites, the fastest way to knock that out is with an A triple F foam. Now we all know that aqueous foam is bad. They’re phasing out the aqueous foam right now — the U.S Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have a recent agreement to phase that out.”
Dela Cruz added, “I’m out here to announce to the public that if you are a former firefighter in the CNMI or a current firefighter and you have been exposed to A triple F foam in any sort of way, even way back in the ‘80s, you need to reach out to your Local 5335.”
Class action lawsuit
“If you have any of the following diseases: 1) kidney cancer, 2) liver cancer, 3) testicular cancer, 4) ulcerative colitis, 5) thyroid cancer, 6) thyroid disease, you need to contact me immediately, that way we can get you in contact with our law firm in the States to get you into the A triple F claim,” Dela Cruz said. “You have a chance to be able to be part of this claim if you have any of these diseases and you were exposed to A triple F anytime in your fire service career, so we’re trying…to make sure that you get the assistance that you need.”
Dela Cruz said that, so far, there is one claimant from the CNMI.
“I can’t disclose the name, but we…have reached out to the individual. He is in contact with our law firm, Motley Rice LLC Attorneys at Law, and he’s going through the process right now,” Dela Cruz said.
“This is shocking, because this is recent; he was a firefighter with us,” he added.
“I don’t know how many other firefighters have this, because we all know that once we have cancer, once we have thyroid, or that kind of stuff, we’re very hesitant to let people know. Some people don’t want to be known to have this [disease], and they’ll downplay it. But I’m here to let you know that you don’t have to tell everybody; you can just contact me directly and we’ll get you the help that you guys need,” Dela Cruz said.
NMPFU Local 5335 can be contacted at (670) 287-0891.
“Contact us and we will carry it out from there,” Dela Cruz said.
As for compensation and treatment, he said, “That’s for the law firm to decide. The law firm will do an interview and then they’ll go from there to see how much they will be able to be compensated …because it also depends on whatever their categories are. A lot of law firms in the States are going for this. Motley Rice LLC Attorneys at Law was the law firm contracted externally by the [International Association of Fire Fighters] to handle this directly on behalf of IAFF.”
According to online sources, over 6,000 lawsuits have been filed against manufacturers of AFFF, focusing mainly on health risks associated with long-term exposure to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) found in AFFF that have been linked to various cancers and other serious health issues.
