Firefighters and 9/11 families blast Giuliani

New York: Fire union leaders and relatives of firefighters killed at the World Trade Center in 2001 have blasted Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani in a video, pairing footage of the falling twin towers with charges that the city's former mayor was woefully unprepared for September 11, causing needless firefighter deaths.

The parents and siblings of some of the 343 firefighters killed in the terrorist attacks released the video with the International Association of Fire Fighters, which opposes Giuliani's candidacy.

Giuliani's campaign denounced the images, saying that the former mayor had a long history of supporting firefighters' health and safety and that the international union releasing the video only supports Democratic presidential candidates. The union officials and family members, repeating claims they had made for months, charged Giuliani pushed for a faster cleanup of ground zero at the expense of finding remains, put an emergency centre in a building that collapsed on 9/11 and failed to provide working radios for firefighters, making it impossible for forewarning them of collapse.

"Virtually the whole thing goes back to him with the radios," Jim Riches, a deputy fire chief whose son was killed on September 11, says in the video. "He's the guy on the top, and he's the guy you yell at.

"He takes the hit. And my son is dead because of it." Giuliani's camp called the video a "mockumentary". Giuliani campaign spokesman Michael McKeon said the union "makes Michael Moore look like Edward R. Murrow".