N001497
Thursday, January 10, 2002 11:11 AM
To Mr. Feinberg,
I am writing to implore you to please revise the guidelines you set forth for the Victim's Compensation Fund. While limiting the liability of the airlines and exonerating the FAA and the federal intelligence community the fund has become the only viable venue of recovery for victim's families. Life insurance, 401-K's and pension plans are tools that our loved ones used to provide for the financial security of our families. The plan should not even consider these sources in any compensation package, The negligence of others should not be diminished because of the financial responsibility that victims exercised prior to this tragedy. No amount of money will bring back those we loved, but we also can not hold those that failed to provide for our loved one's security accountable. Your plan can be renamed Zero for Heroes because the uniformed service members have benefits that will exceed the compensation set in the tables. Victims families have lost not only a loved one, but our future has been altered forever. I would like to share the story of my brother, ,27, and my family. Then you should try to put a price tag on his valor and our grief.
worked for the New York Fire Patrol, early that morning he called to let us know a plane had hit the WTC and he was responding. My dad a retired NYC police officer and a volunteer fireman replied that he would meet him there, leaving the security of his home in Staten Island to help those in need. My mom and I sat watching television horrified at both the sight of the second plane and the towers collapse. This is a day I will never be able to forget Our anxiety eased a little when we received a phone call from an FDNY firefighter saying that Fireman was hurt, but okay. We immediately thought of my brother and assumed my father was on his way. A half-hour later we received a phone call from a volunteer firefighter and current NYC police officer that had responded with my father, he frantically told us that he could not find my father and they had been in the tower when it collapsed. It was hours before we learned that my father was in a hospital in Jersey City and that there was no word on my brother.
What we have pieced together from that day is that reported into the command center at 9 am with his Sergeant from the Fire Patrol. They were assigned to evacuate the lower level of the tower and as people came down the escalators to direct them out towards Church Street. While he was on the lower level he could hear the screams of a woman who was trapped in the elevator, imagine the suffering of that woman, my brother repeatedly asked to go help, but there was nothing they could do to help save that woman. Imagine the mental anguish my brother experienced as he tried to rescue others but could not help the woman in the elevator. My brother continued to carry the injured from the building making several trips into and out of Tower 1. When the towers collapsed he was separated from his sergeant, his sergeant made it out, my brother never came home. On Christmas Eve my father was at the site assisting in the recovery efforts when several civilians were found in the courtyard, to him this was a success because some family would at least be able to lay their loved one to rest. After returning home and trying to celebrate Christmas Eve my father received a call at 11 informing him that they recovered my brother's body. My father went to the site but there would be no medical examiner to the next morning, so he returned on Christmas day with my mother to the morgue to spend a final Christmas with . The pain is at times unbearable not a day goes by where we do not cry, my daughter will never know her uncle, our lives will never be the same. Still my father returns to the site two to three times a week for there our other families still waiting, people still need to recover everyone possible, because that is our final act of kindness to those we lost.
My brother died with a $1.05 in his wallet, surely that does not indicate the value of his life, neither does his 36K salary. The people my brother rescued that day will be forever in his debt. Our nation's ray of light that day came from the everyday men and women that did extraordinary things when faced with a life or death challenge. Throughout that building civilians and uniformed together placed the lives of others before their own. We will forever carry memory alive, but families do not fully know the long term impact this will have on their lives. We are still in mourning, yet we are being called upon to calculate the value of a life. Revisit your formula and your actuarial table tell me where it accounts for valor, honor and compassion for in their hour of need the victims of NY had to rely on the bravery and selflessness of fellow New Yorkers.
Individual Comment
Bellevue, NE