Aid for Rescuers Reaches Families

The International Assn. of Fire Fighters today will hand out the first $10,000 checks to families of some of the 356 firefighters and paramedics who died at the World Trade Center--the first distribution of millions of dollars from a newly created fund.

By some estimates, more than $560 million has been raised by a host of new charities for victims of the disaster and their families, but it will take time to get the money into the hands of the people who need it, “and I can guarantee that it’s hard,” said Susan Erdey of New York’s Foundation Center.

Between the donors and the recipients stands an army of lawyers, bankers and administrators. Even advocates who started work immediately after the disaster occurred are just cutting their first checks this week. And many of them are wading through red tape and Internal Revenue Service regulations under tremendous personal stress.

Take Harold Schaitberger, the president of the firefighters association. He was sitting at his desk in Washington on Sept. 11 when an aide ran in and exclaimed: “My God, a plane has hit the World Trade Center!”

Schaitberger flipped on the television. When he saw the first tower crumble, “I just couldn’t speak for what seemed like minutes,” he said. “I knew we had people in those stairwells. It was clear to me that we were going to experience something unimaginable.”

He drove to the Pentagon to survey the damage caused by a third hijacked plane. Then he and his top aides gathered in their silent, evacuated office building next to the White House, sat down and pulled together a plan to help firefighters and their families.

“I knew in my heart it was going to be hundreds,” Schaitberger said.

Early the next morning, Schaitberger and his aides drove through the spooky, debris-filled streets of Manhattan, and though he has witnessed disaster--Hurricane Andrew, the Oklahoma City bombing and the Northridge earthquake--”nothing prepares you for the magnitude of this devastation. For the smell. It was just overwhelming.”

They set up headquarters at the Sheraton Towers in mid-Manhattan, coordinated emergency relief crews and began to tally their losses. Today, at least 343 firefighters and 13 paramedics are believed dead, leaving behind devastated families, 1,000 children--and a lot of immediate and long-term needs.

The union announced the fund--one of several established for firefighting families--and called their 245,000 members into action. Firefighters from Florida to Kansas City, Mo., and Canada hit the streets and started doing something firefighters get lots of experience doing--drumming up charity donations--this time, for their own cause.

Some high-end charity lawyers handled the paperwork and IRS filings. A bank offered to administer the funds and the credit card transactions for free. In 48 hours, the fund existed on paper.

Since then, the association fund has banked $5 million. There is as much as $10 million in uncollected pledges, and donations--many online to https://www.iaff.org--roll in constantly.

The firefighters got impatient with the time it took to get the money to the families.

“So much help comes with bureaucracy attached to it,” Schaitberger said.

The checks that accountants finally wrote Tuesday should reach grieving families today.

They won’t be the last checks. There are many needs--today and in years to come, Schaitberger said.

“They’re going to need counseling,” he said. “I don’t care how tough they are--and our people are tough--there are going to be emotional scars for a long, long time.”

There are also kids who need money for school, and later, for college.

Schaitberger is grieving too for friends who died. There was the firefighters’ chaplain, the Rev. Mychal Judge, killed as he knelt to give last rites at the scene to a fatally injured firefighter. And there was the chief, Ray Downey, a world expert in hazardous materials.

After what he witnessed, Schaitberger said, his next fund-raising stop is Congress. A hundred firefighters were lost in the line of duty in 2000, and hundreds more are injured each year.

“When our nation is attacked on the home front,” he said, “the nation’s front line are its firefighters.