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The compensation fund for victims of 9/11 is running out of money and will cut future payments by 50 to 70 per cent, officials have revealed.
Key points:
- The 9/11 victim fund aids people with illnesses potentially related to the 2001 terror attacks
- Up to 19,000 of nearly 40,000 total claims are currently pending
- Officials say it will take another $US5 billion to pay pending and anticipated claims
September 11 Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) special master Rupa Bhattacharyya said she was "painfully aware of the inequity of the situation", but stressed that awarding some funds for every valid claim would be preferable to sending some legitimate claimants away empty-handed.
"I could not abide a plan that would, at the end of the day, leave some claimants uncompensated," Ms Bhattacharyya said.
Nearly 40,000 people have applied to the federal fund for people with illnesses potentially related to being at the World Trade Centre site, the Pentagon or Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the 2001 terror attacks there, and about 19,000 of those claims are pending.
Nearly $US5 billion in benefits have been awarded out of the $7.3 billion fund.
Ms Bhattacharyya said fund officials estimated it would take another $5 billion to pay pending claims and the claims that officials anticipate will be submitted before the fund's December 2020 deadline.
Without that funding, officials determined that pending claims submitted by February 1 would be paid at 50 per cent of their prior value.
Valid claims received after that date would be paid at just 30 per cent.
Members of Congress responded to the announcement on Friday (local time) by vowing to reauthorise the compensation fund.
"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," Democratic representatives Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney and Republican Peter King said in a statement.
They said they would introduce legislation to make the compensation fund permanent and to compensate all legitimate claimants.
"Our bill would restore any cuts to awards, ensure that future eligible recipients are fully compensated, and make the VCF program permanent," the politicians said.
The Senate's top Democrat, Senator Charles Schumer, said the fund was supposed to provide "peace of mind to those sickened after the horrific attack".
"For too many, ailments and disease from exposure to that toxic airborne brew have taken years to show up and — as the need for the fund grows — the chance it may not have adequate resources to take care of our heroes is just unacceptable," Mr Schumer said in a statement.
The collapse of the trade centre in 2001 sent a cloud of thick dust billowing over Lower Manhattan. Fires burned for weeks.
Thousands of construction workers, police officers, firefighters and others spent time working in the soot, often without proper respiratory protection.
In the 17 years since, many have seen their health decline, some with respiratory or digestive-system ailments that appeared almost immediately, others with illnesses that developed as they aged, including cancer.
Scientists cannot say definitively whether toxins at the site gave people cancer.
One study published last year found that overall mortality rates among nearly 30,000 rescue and recovery workers were not elevated.
But researchers have raised concerns of an unusual number of suicides among first responders and more deaths than expected from brain cancers and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Ms Bhattacharyya said the volume of claims had increased over the past year, with more than 8,000 filed in the last four months.
Reasons for the increase include the long latency period for some cancers as well as an increase in applications by people who lived or worked near the trade centre but were not actively involved in recovery efforts, Ms Bhattacharyya said.
AP
Topics: september-11-attacks, politics-and-government, mental-health, cancer, united-states
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