Payments For 9/11 Victims To See Massive Cuts

NEW YORK — A federal fund must cut payments to some 9/11 victims and their families by as much as 70 percent with its coffers at risk of drying up, officials announced Friday.

The 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund has seen a surge of claims since the October news that it might not have enough money to pay all its expected beneficiaries, Special Master Rupa Bhattacharyya said. Those beneficiaries include sickened first-responders and loved ones of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and other sites.

The fund has spent almost $5 billion on more than 21,000 claims and only has about $2.38 billion left to cover nearly 20,000 more claims and "amendments," plus thousands more claims that have yet to be filed, Bhattacharyya said.

As a result, payments to anyone who submitted a claim by Feb. 1 will be slashed by 50 percent, while claims filed after that date will see a massive 70 percent reduction, the fund says.

"I am painfully aware of the inequity of the situation," Bhattacharyya wrote in a Friday message. "I also deeply regret that I could not honor my intention to spare any claim submitted prior to this announcement from any reductions made due to a determination of funding insufficiency."

"But the stark reality of the data leaves me no choice," she added.

The changes will apply to money awarded on or after Feb. 25, the fund said. Anyone who was notified of their compensation before the shift was announced will not see any cuts, according to a question-and-answer sheet.

The bleak news spurred New York's federal lawmakers to renew their calls to keep the fund alive to support the growing number of people sickened by the attacks.

Three local House of Representatives members pledged to introduce a bill on Congress's next session day that would make the fund permanent and restore any cuts. The fund was last renewed in 2015 and is currently slated to end in December 2020.

"This is devastating news to the thousands of sick and injured 9/11 responders and survivors who were promised, and have been counting on, being fully compensated for the losses they have suffered," the legislators — Carolyn Maloney, Jerrold Nadler and Peter King — said in a statement Friday.

Bhattacharyya first indicated the fund was in trouble last fall, when she announced it may not have enough money to pay all its projected claims.

There has been a massive spike in claims in recent years, Bhattacharyya wrote Friday. Nearly 20,000 were filed in 2017 and 2018 alone, compared to more than 19,000 in the five years before that, she said — and 4,800 more were filed just last month.

While she said the funding concerns likely moved people to apply, Bhattacharyya also attributed the increase to a rise in serious illnesses and deaths among 9/11 victims and various outreach efforts to eligible beneficiaries.

Many more people are expected to be sickened by their exposure to toxins at Ground Zero in the months following 9/11, said Michael Barasch, a partner at the law firm Barasch & McGarry. He called for the fund to be extended and fully funded.

"People were told by the Federal Government that the air was safe to breathe — but the air was highly carcinogenic, with a chemical composition similar to Drano, and mixed with pulverized glass and concrete," Barasch, whose firm specializes in helping 9/11 survivors get compensation, said in a statement. "Members of the 9/11 community and their families continue to suffer."

(Lead image: People place flowers on the names inscribed on the north reflecting pool of the National September 11 Memorial for those killed in the Feb. 26, 1993 truck bomb attack at the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 2018 in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)