New Yorkers who survived 9/11 are experiencing a massive surge in aggressive brain cancers as dollars for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund continue to dry up — leaving them wondering in their final days who will support their families once they’re gone.

“I call it cancer on steroids,” said Michael Barasch, the former personal attorney of James Zadroga, the late NYPD detective for whom the federal 9/11 Health and Compensation Act is named.

The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund — a separate benefit from the Zadroga Act — has paid out billions of dollars to tens of thousands of people, but is set to run dry in 2020, at a time when many victims need it most.

Barasch now represents at least 15,000 people suffering from 9/11-related illnesses — 85 of them stricken with cases of brain cancer that is far more aggressive than the national average, thanks to the carcinogenic stew of ground glass, asbestos, chromium, lead and benzene drifting through the air around Ground Zero for months after the attacks.

Nationally, the median age of brain cancer diagnosis is 58 and the patient lives, on average, seven years after diagnosis, making the median age of brain cancer death in the US 65, according to the National Cancer Institute.

But among Barasch’s 85 brain cancer-afflicted clients, the average age of diagnosis is about a year and a half younger at 56.6, and they’re dying on average at the age of 58.2 — making the average time between diagnosis and death a mere 18 months.

That means the life expectancy of people with 9/11-related brain cancers is nearly 80 percent shorter than those with non-9/11 related brain cancers.

One of those people is Kevin Bevilacqua, a 53-year-old retired firefighter who was diagnosed with brain cancer late last year.

Like many other first responders on Sept. 11, it was Bevilacqua’s day off, but as soon as he heard five hijackers had crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into floors 93 through 99 of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, he jumped into action.

“I gotta go to work,” he told his wife as he handed her their baby son and dashed off.

For years, Bevilacqua has lived with sinus issues related to his search and rescue efforts at Ground Zero in the days and weeks following the attacks and in the nearly two decades since, he’s watched so many people like him fall.

“I was talking to a friend of mine the other night… ‘is this thing going to get us all?’ Throughout the years you’re wondering is your number going to be called and sure enough” his was.

Bevilacqua never took advantage of any of the health programs offered by the Zadroga Act but as a married father of three, when he learned he had brain cancer, that all changed.

“[I thought] ‘wow this could be it.’ You don’t know the time frame. Is it going to be a really urgent thing? Am I going to die in two months or a year? And you start to think, is your family ready for that?” Bevilacqua questioned.

“That’s why I went for the victim’s compensation fund because there’s some financial reward needed there to get my family to where they need to be.”

Luckily, Bevilacqua applied for money from the fund before the deadline and he and his family will receive the full award others did.

But he’s furious to know others like him won’t.

“You can’t do this to people, especially to first responders, construction guys that ran down there to help and now they’re going down left and right,” Bevilacqua railed.

“Something like this there’s no money for? It just doesn’t make any sense… we’re not going to let [government officials] make these unsavory decisions behind closed doors without answering these questions, especially for these people who didn’t ask questions and ran into a situation to help and now they don’t have support.”

For applicants who hadn’t received payments by Feb. 25 this year, their awards were cut in half. Survivors who applied after that date are faced with up to a 70% cut in support. The fund will officially run out in December 2020.

Jodi Kaye, 50, was a catering director at the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floors of the north tower and if she hadn’t of missed her train that morning, she would’ve died like nearly 80 of her coworkers did.

She contracted an inoperable form of brain cancer about a decade ago and said it came from the time she spent volunteering at Ground Zero after the attack.

“It was all still very smokey, and no one knew, no one even thought twice about it,” Kaye remembered.

She can’t work now and without money from the fund, she wouldn’t have the cash needed to send her teenage son and daughter to college or to maintain a lifestyle that’s difficult enough to endure without financial problems.

“Cutting it is absurd, it doesn’t make sense to me,” Kaye said.

“It’s horrible, I don’t even have words… It’s not fair to these people who are still getting cancer everyday and will continue to.”

Ingrid-Morales Shea tragically lost her husband Nassau County Police Lieutenant Michael Shea to brain cancer two years ago when he was just 53 less than two years after he was diagnosed.

For years as her husband’s primary caretaker, she bore witness to his daily struggles as his body slowly deteriorated from the disease.

“During the time he was sick I was dealing with whatever we had in our savings and our checkings, paying all the bills because he wasn’t working. Even though he was getting his pension, it wasn’t enough to be able to take care of whatever needed to get done,” Shea explained.

She said her late husband would be very disappointed to know families like his won’t be supported from the fund like his wife was.

“He’s one of those individuals who feels like everyone has the right to get what they deserve… This shouldn’t have ever happened to anyone,” Shea said.

Barasch has been lobbying for a 70-year extension of the Zadroga Act in Washington D.C. because everyday, people are being diagnosed with 9/11 related cancers.

“Cops and firefighters got it a little faster because they were in the pit but it’s not just first responders. It’s local residents, it’s office workers, it’s now school children… they’re coming down with the exact same cancers as the first responders did,” Barasch said.

“It’s so unfair because cancer doesn’t have a deadline… so if you were unlucky enough to not get cancer by December then you’re out of luck. You’re getting zero.”