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CNN Saturday Morning News
Families of WTC Victims Struggle to Obtain Compensation
Aired November 24, 2001 - 07:08 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: The families of September 11 victims know that their loved ones won't be coming home, and their grieving is complicated by what's turning out to be an arduous task of obtaining compensation.
CNN's Sheilah Kast has that story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SHEILAH KAST, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For days after September 11, Traci Rowenhorst kept vigil at the Pentagon, praying her husband, Eddie, an Army budget analyst, would emerge. He did not.
Now, along with grief, her days are filled with paper -- forms to fill out for insurance, the government, the Red Cross, and other charities.
TRACI ROWENHORST, WIFE OF PENTAGON VICTIM: And it just drags it out longer and longer. Like, you want to get to a point where you can get over it and move on with your life and be emotionally stable with it, and this is just dragging it out.
DIANE SIMPSON, WIFE OF WORLD TRADE CENTER VICTIM: A whole lot of paperwork...
KAST: A few miles away, Diane Simpson spends hours each day trolling Web sites looking for where to call or write for help for herself and her triplets, aged 7. Her husband, Jeff, a licensed emergency medical technician, was working at his computer job in lower Manhattan that morning. He ran into the Twin Towers to help.
SIMPSON: I just feel like I just owe it to my kids, you know, that I need to figure everything out as best as I can.
KAST: Traci and Diane became friends in the wake of September 11, two young mothers joined by grief and a need for answers. Because her husband, Eddie, worked at the Pentagon, Traci has been assigned an Army officer who helps ferret out information. Diane and other families of New York victims don't get that kind of help.
SIMPSON: I've been a stay-at-home mom since the day they were born, and my husband, like Traci's, did all the finances, everything.
KAST: But now everything falls to them, like what to believe when Diane is told by a Red Cross volunteer that she is likely to get another check for living expenses in two months, while another Red Cross worker tells Traci the opposite?
(on camera): Many now say the charities should simply divide the money for the bereaved families and distribute it in equal lump sums. But a senior Red Cross official said the only fair way to use the money donated by Americans is to identify and pay specific expenses.
(voice-over): But what about the future?
ROWENHORST: We have girls who've got to go through marriages by their selves, college, educations, prom dresses, cars, maybe, whatever it is. Right now we may be comfortable, but we're looking down the road.
KAST: A road that is turning out to be even more of a challenge than they feared two months ago.
Sheilah Kast, CNN, northern Virginia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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