For some 9/11 survivors, the wounds are being reopened in a different way.
People who endured agonizing, permanently disfiguring burns in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks say the public has grown distant from the scale of the devastation — and, in some cases, has treated their suffering with dismissiveness.
“There are people who tell the survivors of 9/11 that we need to get over it,” said Ken Summers, 76, who sustained third-degree burns at the World Trade Center.
“They say, ‘I know your story.’ People don’t want to hear about it anymore,” Summers, a Long Island resident, told The Post as the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches.
“People are 9/11’ed out — they’re done with it. They’ve had enough, and I’ve felt like that for years.”
Summers, who worked on the 27th floor, was in the North Tower lobby at 8:46 a.m., preparing to mail a check, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building.
A roaring fireball swallowed him and blasted him backward onto the sidewalk.
The explosion left him with severe third-degree burns across his hands and arms, along with second-degree burns to his face and head.
The former Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield analyst has undergone roughly a dozen painful skin grafts and surgeries, battled PTSD and been forced to abandon pastimes that once gave him comfort.
“It’s been tough — I’m always in pain. It’s with me every day,” said Summers, now a grandfather.
Summers said too many people downplay both the magnitude of the terrorist attack and the life-altering injuries he continues to carry.
He recalled one particularly callous remark from a friend, who once snapped, “Oh, sh-t — we’re going to hear this story for the rest of our lives,” Summers said.
Others have dismissed his burns — which caused charred bubbling skin that destroyed his hair and peeled off in sheets — as worth it for the payout.
“At first almost everybody says, ‘Well, you must have gotten a lot of money,’” he said.
“Yes, I’ve got a substantial sum of money, but I’ve also had a substantial amount of pain and recovery. Are you factoring that in?” he said.
The glib remarks happen so often that Summers, who said he’s received about one million dollars from the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund, has a prepared “comeback.”
“Do you think I would have liked to have given up piano playing, golfing, tennis and skiing – things I loved?” asked Summers.
He pointed out he can no longer grip a racquet or club, adding, “I can’t feel things like other people.”
“Do you think I would have given all that up for money?” he said.
Of the roughly 50 people who were severely burned on 9/11, Summers is one of about half to survive past the first year.
Lauren Manning, who is also a 9/11 burn victim, told The Post some people are uncomfortable hearing stories about the attacks.
“People gravitate towards stories that are easier to hold,” said Manning, a Cantor Fitzgerald senior executive, who suffered debilitating burns on more than 82 percent of her body during the attack.
Manning — who was engulfed in a fireball in the lobby of the North Tower — said “time fades” and “the immediacy of this horrific mass terror attack appears somehow less” for people.
But the mom of two, who has endured years of surgery and physical therapy, said she hasn’t let it get in the way of her recovery.
“Survival is a private struggle. It happens generally out of sight, but it was my own act of defiance. I had one simple goal: I was not going to let the terrorists claim another kill,” she said.
Other survivors said it’s common to feel slighted.
William Rodriguez, a North Tower custodian dubbed a hero for helping first responders rescue people, said fellow survivors feel they’ve been treated with “disrespect.”
“Survivors tell me they’re always dealing with people who tell them to ‘move on, don’t dwell on it,’” said Rodriguez, who lost 200 friends on 9/11
“People believe we made off with a lot of compensation money and that’s not true,” Rodriguez said, blasting the false assertions of a big pay day.
With “extreme PTSD and survivor’s guilt,” Rodriguez found himself destitute in 2005, living in a car under the Pulaski Skyway bridge.
“I went from national hero to zero,” he said, noting that he was “victimized again – begging for help” to no avail.
“Survivors suffer in silence – people have to defend themselves. They have to validate their pain because some people don’t get it,” he said.
People no longer want to hear about the fallout from 9/11, said Brian Branco, who’s dealing with lifelong PTSD from the attacks.
“People get bored – they have no interest,” said Branco, who worked for the software company Baseline on the 78th floor of the South Tower, where colleagues died.
The Lyndhurst, NJ dad said insensitivity surfaced immediately, when a family member challenged his wife three weeks after 9/11, asking, “What are you complaining about? Your husband lived.”
He added, “People think if you don’t have any physical injury, what’s your problem? But you know what? I left three people behind,” he admitted. “I beat myself up about it.”
The survivors’ comments came as NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch this week called for “moral clarity” ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks — decrying revisionists who have downplayed the attack or framed it as heroic.
