On Sept. 10, 2015, the eve of the World Trade Center terror attacks' anniversary, Ken Muller collapsed while running a data center for a Connecticut investment firm, stricken with kidney cancer. His brother-in-law, a cop who’d labored “on the pile” clearing debris in the tragedy’s aftermath, recalled that Ken was a 9/11 “civilian,” a Goldman Sachs employee who was working blocks from Ground Zero when the pirated jets pierced the Twin Towers. “One of my first memories after the operation is of my brother-in-law handing me these forms,” says Muller. “He said, ‘You have to join these 9/11 health care and compensation programs.’”
Following the removal of a huge cancerous tumor surrounding his left kidney, and the kidney itself, Muller underwent 54 weeks of chemotherapy. The side effects left him unable to return to a job. But a large cash award for pain and suffering, and guaranteed payments for the costs of treating his condition not covered by his regular insurance, have secured Muller’s financial well-being and assured top care from physicians who currently rate him “cancer-free.” “Now I’ll be around to see my granddaughters as young adults,” declares Muller.
Although Muller can no longer manage operations outposts, his 21-year gig at Goldman, he’s found a satisfying, though taxing, avocation: recruiting people who worked and lived in the 9/11 danger zone to enroll in the plans that so eased his own misfortune. “I’ve personally helped 70 people to sign up,” Muller told Fortune. “Five years ago at a personal finance seminar, a woman overheard me talking about the programs. Her husband was a transit authority employee who’d from died of cancer after 9/11. She didn’t even know about the plans. I helped her enroll, and it changed her life.”
Now, Muller will finally have some serious help. That's thanks to a landmark law called the "9/11 Notice Act," which was just passed unanimously by both chambers of the New York State legislature, which will for the first time mandate that Wall Street take the lead in winning justice for 9/11 survivors. The legislation will soon require the likes of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Amex, major employers around Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001, to join the drive.
And it's not always an easy task to alert those who’ve developed 9/11-related illnesses. “A lot of people don’t connect the dots,” Muller says. “It’s 22 years later. People get sick many years following the event, but they don’t relate the illnesses to 9/11. Sometimes they think the cancer or respiratory problems have another cause. They watch streaming and don’t see the lawyers’ ads for 9/11 survivors, or they’ve moved to Florida or North Carolina and don’t witness that New York media blitz at all.” Many of these civilians, he notes, even “feel guilty” about signing on, falsely believing that they would be taking money from the policemen and firefighters whose displays of bravery left them disabled or gravely sick.
A potential boon for 9/11 survivors: Employers will soon spearhead the outreach
Passed on June 19, the 9/11 Notice Act is heading for the desk of Governor Kathy Hochul, who is virtually certain to sign the historic measure into law. The bill will require still-existing employers active in the danger zone at the time of the catastrophe and the months thereafter—and big banks and brokerages head the list—to contact every still-living worker, past and present, on their payrolls near Ground Zero, explain that they may have been exposed to harmful toxins unleashed in the fiery explosion, and inform them of their possible rights to free health care and cash payouts. For over a decade, billions of dollars in aid have been available for those “survivors.” But versus the highly responsive first responders, relatively few have applied.
Are these folks simply experiencing far less illness than the firefighters and police officers, or not getting the information and help that lone advisors such as Mullers are providing, which, if spread by powerful institutions, would attract new hordes to the programs? It’s among the enduring post-disaster mysteries that the fresh, mainly Wall Street–marshaled campaign will help resolve.
The Notice Act applies not only to such big enterprises as the marquee-name financial institutions, but any still-operating law firms, restaurant chains, or other purveyors, as well as the likes of schools, foundations, and city agencies in downtown Manhattan and Western Brooklyn. Say an existing company bought a business that met those criteria on 9/11: The “parent” must inform all the qualifying workers from the acquired enterprise, whether or not they’re still on staff, of their eligibility status. Veterans of defunct businesses such as Lehman Bros. (6,800 employees in the area on 9/11) won’t get notifications.
For example, the law would require Intercontinental Exchange, the trading colossus that purchased the NYSE in 2013, to contact all of the iconic institution’s 9/11-period workforce that’s still living. The same applies to BofA for the more than 7,000 employees housed at the World Financial Center on 9/11 at Merrill Lynch. On the neighborhood level, famed Wall Street retailer Century 21, which closed in the pandemic but recently reopened, is obliged to reach the roughly 600 people serving its flagship blocks from Ground Zero, whether still on its roster or gone. The employment period covered extends beyond the morning the Twin Towers fell to the end of May 2002. Hence, anyone from electricians to teachers who weren’t there on 9/11 but spent substantial time in the area over the next several months is due valuable messaging from their current or former employers.
As drafted, the legislation doesn’t specify how the companies must reach out, or what direction they'd provide to help survivors harvest the medical coverage and payments they’re entitled to. But New York politicians hail the measure as striking a blow for folks who aren’t getting benefits not because they don’t deserve them, but because they don’t know that the 9/11 programs exist or what they offer. As Assemblyman Nader Sayegh, who introduced the Notice Act in the lower chamber, stated, “Forgotten victims, including downtown office workers, doormen, construction workers, students, teachers, retail workers, delivery people must be notified of their eligibility status by their employer” to help overcome “an utter lack of awareness.”
Big Wall Street employers haven’t spoken publicly on the law, and those contacted by Fortune declined comment. But given the populist enthusiasm for the measure, as exemplified by the feat of sweeping every vote in the legislature, it’s likely that we’ll soon witness the largest effort ever to enlighten the group that needs the most help: the 9/11 civilians.
The vast majority of responders benefit from both plans
The two closely related programs are the World Trade Center Health Program and the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund (VCF). Each is available to the two categories of people and families that suffered in 9/11, the “first responders” and the “survivors.” The former group encompasses not only the firefighters and police officers who rushed to the scene, but sundry National Guard members, Red Cross reps, and construction workers who performed emergency services. The survivors comprise the people who either lived, worked, or went to school in the danger zone. On 9/11, the area had roughly 35,000 residents and 50,000 students and teachers. An estimated 315,000 worked in lower Manhattan, for a total of around 400,000 survivors, also known as civilians.
It’s likely that financial services companies employed well over half of those 300,000-plus workers. In mid-2001, the industry occupied 55% of all the office space in the 9/11 area. Big tenants included not just Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, BNY Mellon, and other big banks but exchanges (NYSE and NYMEX), rating agencies (S&P, Moody’s), and insurers (AIG and Marsh & McLennan). Individual firms have tried to inform and assist their communities, but the Notify Law would mark the first official effort.
The first responders numbered around 100,000. Virtually all of those still alive, some 86,000, are enrolled in the Health Program. Of that total, almost 60%, or approximately 50,000, have contracted cancer, respiratory, PTSD, or another certified condition. The other 36,000 haven’t fallen ill, but they’ve satisfied the program’s requirements by providing proof of their frontline roles, and joined the plan. As members, they’ll automatically qualify for free care if they contract any of the 69 cancers now covered, or other maladies recognized by the plans.
A key feature of both programs: They operate on the “presumption” that any of the approved sicknesses arose from the toxins spewed in the inferno, and not from another source. “It doesn’t matter if you have a family history or other exposure that could have played a part in your diagnosis,” says Michael Barasch, founding partner of Barasch & McGarry, the firm that has represented over 35,000 9/11 victims, “If you were in the exposure zone and later developed a 9/11-related illness, it’s presumed that your exposure to toxins was the cause.” Congress, assisted by New York City, has allocated what appears sufficient funding for the life of the programs, even if the new law sends future claims higher than anticipated.
The VCF pays both awards to individuals for pain and suffering and lost income, and “deceased claims” to the families of those who died of the 9/11 illnesses—a category encompassing less than 6% of the total 49,000 claims paid by the VCF from its founding in 2011 through 2022. (Compensation was awarded to the families of the almost 3,000 who died in the attack between 2002 to 2004 from the original VCF.) Of the almost 50,000 payments made under the current VCF, around 31,000 went to the responders or their spouses or other kin. It’s clear that virtually all of the responders enrolled in the health plans who qualify for VCF payments have received them. Only those with physical injuries are eligible under the VCF. Those suffering from psychological ailments such as PTSD get their care covered under the Health Program, but don’t receive cash compensation from the Victim Fund.
The survivors’ participation greatly lags that of the responders
In both plans, a wide gulf separates the first responders and survivors. The disparity is especially striking since the worker-resident cohort outnumbers the frontline group by four to one. The Health Plan covers 37,000 survivors, fewer than one-third of its members. But as Ben Chevat, head of advocacy program 9/11 Health Watch points out, survivors can only join if they’re already diagnosed or have symptoms of a 9/11 illness, while all responders have the right to enroll in anticipating that they may contract a 9/11-related illness in the future. “So, comparing the percentage membership of the categories to interpret how much each needs care is misleading,” says Chevat.
The most striking comparison: In the VCF, the requirements for compensation are the same for both groups. Yet despite their much higher numbers, the survivors have garnered around 17,000 payments in the plan’s 11-year existence, one-half the figure for the responders.
If indeed many survivors qualify for payments they haven’t received, they’re missing big money, notably for cancers that account for a large portion of the payments. Barasch reviewed the dollar amounts granted for different illnesses. Asthma, among the most common afflictions, brings $20,000. Skin cancers basal and squamous command $90,000, prostate cancer $200,000, and all other varieties such as melanoma and leukemia $250,000. The biggest total payments go for wrongful death. The surviving spouse receives $250,000 as well as compensation for lost income, and each dependent child gets $100,000. According to Barasch, the average wrongful death case brings around $500,000.
All told, the VCF paid out $10.9 billion between 2011 and 2022. The average recipient pocketed $223,000.
How the 9/11 survivors fund works
For Barasch, the responder-versus-survivor numbers suggest that a vast horde of civilians are eligible for health care and cash they’re not getting. Keep in mind that he and his firm will profit if that’s the case, though it’s important to note that Congress has capped the contingency fees at 10%. Still, he sees daily the problems in getting qualifying survivors to come forward. “They breathed the same toxic dust as the responders,” he says. “I’d say the same 60% of the survivors as the responders are suffering from 9/11 illnesses. Why are they not enrolling? Not because they don’t have the same prevalence of sickness, but that they just don’t know they’re eligible… Or they just think it’s just for firefighters or cops. Or they feel guilty taking money from the first responders, when there are plentiful resources for all.”
Muller agrees that what explains the gap between sponsors and survivors isn’t less sickness, but less education. “The firefighter, police, and other unions did a great job informing their members about their rights,” he says. “The Wall Street firms, the schools, the employers sometimes acted, [but] didn’t have that official responsibility. The survivors lacked organized support. The Notice Act will help create a level playing field.” In other words, it will do for the civilians what the unions did for the cops, firefighters, and construction crews.
But Chevat takes a more cautious, wait-and-see approach. “We just don’t have a lot of good data on how much the resident and employment communities were exposed, or for the schoolchildren. We’ve also seen lots of efforts to reach out to those groups, including all the lawyers’ ads. I wouldn’t say there’s a lack of awareness. You can’t automatically apply that because 60% of the responders got sick, the same percentage applies to the survivors. Still, the Notice Act is a good step forward.” Kimberly Flynn, director of 9/11 Environmental Action, a nonprofit that guides survivors to access the available health programs, believes that the cumbersome paperwork and other requirements to qualify for care have blocked many of the deserving from signing on. “If employers could streamline the process, that would be a great thing,” says Flynn. “I can’t say how many of those onetime 400,000 survivors are ill, but it’s certainly a larger number than those in the Health Program now.”
Of course, the financial services giants that dominated employment in the danger zone will now head the push that Muller hopes will echo unions’ early role as all-out educators. This writer called a Wall Street prime mover in conducting people to safety on the morning no one will forget, Frank Bisignano. Now CEO of payments stalwart Fiserv, Bisignano on 9/11 was based in lower Manhattan as chief of operations and infrastructure for Citigroup. “We had 16,000 people in the 9/11 area,” he recalls, “We had 7,000 people and 39 floors at 7 World Trade Center, the old Salomon Bros. building, we had three other buildings with trading floors, a tech center, and the global and investment bank. We had more people displaced than any other employer.” Bisignano, megaphone in hand, led a march that numbered thousands of dust-covered investment bankers, office workers, and clerks north to safety.
A few years following 9/11, Bisignano contracted throat cancer, and survived surgery and chemo. When we spoke, he hadn’t heard about the new law—Fiserv and its predecessor companies had no workers in the area at 9/11—but recalled that while he’d heard plenty about the plans, other survivors who’d gotten sick might not be well-informed. “I always knew from day one when I got throat cancer this fund was out there,” he says. “But I felt better not using it. It wasn’t something I economically needed. I'm just happy I’m alive.” Still, Bisignano deems the new law a good idea. “It may inform people who missed the headlines on the aid available,” he says. “If it helps more people, God bless.”
That’s a sentiment fellow cancer survivor Ken Muller endorses wholeheartedly. Muller, who fled a rival’s operations center as Bisignano led his parade, forged a second career as a lone practitioner advising 9/11 victims. The task should get a whole lot easier with Wall Street on his side.
