The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund said it has offered financial support to nearly 6,000 victims’ families and first responders who became sick because of 9/11 in the past year.
An annual report released by the VCF Tuesday says that’s nearly triple the number of payments the fund awarded the year before.
Sheila Birnbaum, who manages the fund, said that VCF worked urgently to process claims last year. She said VCF saw more claimants applying because the fund was set to expire in October. Congress voted to fund the program for the next five years in December.
“We’re very happy that has taken place and that, instead of being in shutdown mode, we can now pay the claimants their full awards and we will be open over the next 5 years to pay additional claimants,” she said.
Birnbaum said Congress has given the fund $4.6 billion dollars to pay new claimants and she hopes she can award them the full amount.
The fund has awarded $1.8 billion dollars to first responders and families of victims since the program began in 2012. 442 victims from Connecticut and 46,607 victims from New York have received compensation so far.
