Evacuees still struggle with events of 9/11

By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer

GLORIA STRAVELLI Paul Mazur of Matawan, Ed Matthews of Hazlet, and Richard Keller of Wall are members of a support group for individuals who survived the attacks of 9/11.

They survived the World Trade Center disaster. They escaped the twin towers, nearby buildings or the streets in the "Red Zone" during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

But the group of 15-20 men and women who now meet each week at the Manalapan headquarters of the Monmouth County Library System have spent the past two years struggling to put their lives back together in the face of physical and mental trauma that has left some feeling their families would be better off had they not survived.

"Our families would have been taken care of," explained Paul Mazur, a member of the World Trade Center Survivors Support Group and a former computer training specialist who was at work across the street from the towers when the attacks took place. "We’re victims too, but we’re not recognized."

The "evacuees," as this group of survivors is referred to, represent just a fraction of the estimated 30,000 people who escaped with their lives on Sept. 11 while 2,792 others perished.

They survived, but their lives have been shattered and, group members say, the two years since the attacks have been a struggle to survive the aftermath and to deal with a patchwork system of limited aid that falls far short of meeting their needs.

"We all hurt every day. We’d like to be recognized and helped," said Ed Matthews, a former securities trader, last week. "People in the group are losing their homes, their marriages are failing, some are on welfare, others are living off of food banks."

"We call ourselves the ‘walking dead,’ " said Richard Keller, a member of the support group that meets at library headquarters every Wednesday (the meeting was moved to coincide with 9/11 this week) under the auspices of the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey, Red Bank.

"I don’t think there’s a survivor who hasn’t wished at some point they had died in those buildings," added Matthews, Hazlet, referring to the host of problems survivors struggle with, ranging from flashbacks to foreclosures. "I’m not trying to trivialize anybody’s loss, but it would have been better for our families."

A former trader for an electronic brokerage firm, Keller, of Wall, was at work on the 46th floor of tower one when the attacks occurred. It took him an hour to escape the building, but he likely will spend the rest of his life reliving the horrors of that day.

"I wake up every morning to a living hell, never able to forget what I have been through," he said. "It has affected every aspect of my life. ... I’ve lost my job. It’s affected my marriage and my family life. I thank God every day that I am alive, but it is hard going forward."

While the outreach to families who lost loved ones in the attacks was swift, many evacuees were, and remain, invis­ible, said Kathy Gross, corporate com­munications manager for the VNA.

"There are still people not going to support groups who need to know there are support groups out there," she noted.

VNA social workers identified some survivors through home visits made to provide counseling to victims, many too traumatized to leave their homes.

"I was doing home counseling with a few survivors for VNA," said Barbara Bunkley, clinical social worker and fa­cilitator of the WTC support group. When clients began asking about other evacuees, she suggested a support group and the VNA agreed to fund it.

"The group began on April 10, 2002. Until then, they were trying to find the courage to come out of their homes," said Bunkley. "Most of them had been masking a lot of it through alcohol and pain medication.

"That’s where the members came from initially; then the word got out and others joined. The group has become a family because no one else under­stands."

"Unless we come to this group, there’s no recognition that we exist," said Matthews who found out about the support group through a newspaper arti­cle.

Bunkley concurred.

"There needs to be basic recognition that these people exist. You never hear about them. What about these people who saw their friends jumping in front of them, saw their bodies torn and bloody. They saw, heard, smelled, tasted and felt death, and they are never recog­nized."

Bunkley, who now works for the American Red Cross, recites the statis­tics of the group of traumatized adults she refers to as "her children": 15-20 men and women between the ages of 25-65, administrative assistant to vice president of a brokerage. The majority were in the buildings, some on the sidewalk on their way to work, others in the vicinity that day.

The extent of their injuries: four seri­ously burned, one with third-degree burns over 30-40 percent of her body; respiratory problems; leg and back in­juries from running and falling down; all suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and are experiencing symptoms including nightmares, flashbacks, hyper­sensitivity, hypervigilance, panic at­tacks, depression and sleep disturbance.

The prognosis isn’t encouraging, she said.

"They will be living with this trauma forever; to some degree it will never go away. Their minds will not allow them to forget it, there will never be closure. The peaks and valleys will just get shorter."

The trauma has wreaked havoc on their families, she said.

"They’ve changed — they’re not the same people. Some of their marriages have failed, they’ve lost their jobs, some turned to alcohol and anti-depres­sants and anxiety medications."

Financial circumstances have changed profoundly. Some were making six figures and aren’t able to go back to work in the city because of PTSD symp­toms or because their jobs no longer ex­ist.

Mazur, Matthews and Keller all con­tinued to work in the weeks and months following the WTC disaster, but eventu­ally their jobs just disappeared.

Matthews saw his securities business evaporate after 32 years of working in the financial sector and went from mak­ing $100-$200 per hour as an indepen­dent trader to a future wage of $10-$12 per hour as a truck driver.

A group member who is a single mother ended up on welfare because she wasn’t at work yet when the attacks oc­curred and doesn’t qualify for compensa­tion. Those who did return to work im­mediately after became ineligible for employment assistance when jobs ended later on. There seem to be as many sce­narios as there are survivors.

"A lot of us don’t meet the qualifica­tions for the financial awards. I was across the street from the towers so I wasn’t eligible to receive awards from several agencies," said Mazur, a Matawan resident.

Evacuees who could prove they were at work or in the area of the attacks on Sept. 11 did qualify for a variety of aid from a host of separate agencies.

But those who did not meet the crite­ria were ineligible for awards from the September 11th Fund, the American Red Cross Gift or the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund which requires that a physically injured victim must have been treated by a doctor within the first 72 hours of the injury.

The VCF also doesn’t recognize PTSD, specifically excluding emotional or mental trauma from eligibility for compensation.

According to a VCF spokeswoman, on average, $1.5 million has been issued to individual claimants who qualify for awards, including those who were phys­ically injured, and surviving family members of victims.

In contrast, evacuees who don’t meet the fund criteria have available to them a host of aid — but it is short-term, dif­ficult to access and limited, they said.

"I still spend all day on the phone trying to find out where I can get assis­tance," explained Keller, who has been unable to find new employment. "It’s a full-time job dealing with the agencies and trying to get help."

Though there’s unlimited access to some forms of assistance like mental health counseling, other forms of assis­tance have stringent limits and, after two years, some resources are winding down.

For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency provided mortgage and rent assistance for 18 months to qualified individuals affected by the WTC disaster but that program has ex­pired.

The Monmouth County Resource Center, a collaboration of seven local agencies focused on helping 9/11 vic­tims, set a $2,500 per household limit on aid in order to spread funds among the greatest number of victims.

An American Red Cross spokesman said that agency will provide financial help to evacuees "after they have ex­hausted all other sources of funds" up to $2,000 per month for a period of six months.

And, mental health experts say, those who need help often don’t come forward for years.

"We learned with Oklahoma City nine years ago that it took some people five to six years before they came for­ward and asked for help," an American Red Cross spokesman said.

The group has taken its case to ev­eryone from widows who lost spouses in the WTC attacks to Kenneth Feinberg, special master of the VCF, without ef­fecting any changes, they note.

Frustrated by maxed-out benefits and savings that have been exhausted, evacuees feel they should be entitled to compensation on a par with those who qualify for the awards.

"We’re not trying to say our prob­lems are worse than those who lost someone," explained Matthews. "We don’t trivialize that loss. But we feel every day like second-class citizens. We read about the amount of money go­ing into memorials, and we sit here and try to figure out how to live from day to day."

"We should be entitled to receive compensation like the people that died that day because we died that day," Keller said. "What this group is looking for is, we need help just like that person who lost her husband ..."

"Why are we not able to receive what the good hearts of the American people gave?" asked Mazur, noting that many of the funds have money leftover.

Despite their struggles, Bunkley said the group is making progress.

"They’re so happy to have each other. I draw my strength from them. I see their growth in the last year."

According to Keller, members of the survivors’ group just want the long-term help necessary to allow them to recover from the trauma and return to normalcy.

"You have to deplete your savings, be destitute and one step away from welfare. Nobody wants that. They want to be self-sufficient. They want to get back to life."

— Kathryn Pichel contributed to this story