The New York Post
NEW YORK —They’re grateful for the help - but some 9/11 survivors and first responders feared yesterday that despite approval of the $4.3 billion bill, the federal government won’t pay them enough for their injuries.
The bill, the result of a hard-fought compromise between Democrats and Republicans, sets aside $2.7 billion to reopen the Victims Compensation Fund set up after the 2001 attacks.
Noah Kushlefsky, a lawyer who represented 125 terror-attack victims under an earlier compensation fund that closed in 2003, isn’t sure the additional money is enough to take care of everyone who needs help.
The earlier compensation fund paid cash to 9/11 victims or their families in return for their promise not to sue the government or the airlines whose planes were used in the attacks. The new fund is meant to help the roughly 40,000 downtown residents, workers and first responders who have since become ill.
After the lawyers’ 10 percent fees, the fund will have $2.5 billion to pay victims.
“The funding limit may mean that people are not properly or adequately taken care of,” said Kushlefsky, of the Manhattan firm Kreindler & Kreindler. “If there’s $10 billion in claims, then everybody is going to get 25 percent of what they’re entitled to.”
Another problem is that the fund will be closed in 2016. “If you don’t know that you are sick by 2016, you are shut out completely,” Kushlefsky said.
Up to 90,000 people might be eligible for money from the newly reopened compensation fund. So far, 16,000 responders and 2,700 people who lived near Ground Zero are sick and getting treatment, and 40,000 people are getting medical monitoring.
At a news conference yesterday, John Feal, a former demolition supervisor at Ground Zero, called the bill’s passage a victory, though he rated it “a 7 on a scale of 10.”
Many 9/11 responders have already died of Ground Zero-related illnesses. “We lost so many good men in this battle, but we won the war,” said Feal. “We stood up to the US government and we won.”
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