If you were in lower Manhattan after September 11, or worked on the debris, there is a federal fund that may owe you money — and the single most common reason people miss it is that they waited until they were sick to do anything about it.
You do not have to be sick to register. You should register anyway.
The fund is permanent now
For years the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund ran on deadlines that kept nearly expiring, and awards were being cut back because the money was running short. That ended on July 29, 2019, when the Never Forget the Heroes Act permanently authorized the fund and removed the funding limits. Awards that had been reduced were restored.
The claim filing deadline is now October 1, 2090. That is not a typo, and it is the reason people relax about this when they should not.
The deadline that actually matters is your own
There are two separate acts, and confusing them is what costs people their claims.
| Registering | Filing a claim | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Telling the VCF you may have a claim one day | Submitting the actual claim with your documentation |
| Do you need to be sick? | No | Yes — you need a certified condition |
| The deadline | Individual to you. Two years. | October 1, 2090, for everyone |
| What it costs you | Nothing. It waives no rights and obligates you to nothing. | — |
Your registration deadline runs two years from when you knew, or reasonably should have known, that you have a 9/11-related condition and that you might be eligible. If you have been certified by the World Trade Center Health Program, the two years runs from your most recent certification.
So there is no single date on a calendar for you to miss. There is a clock that started when you found out, and it has probably been running for a while.
One more thing that catches people, and it catches them badly: being treated or monitored by the WTC Health Program does not register you with the VCF. They are different programs. People assume that because they are in the health program, someone somewhere has them on a list. Nobody does.
Who qualifies
Three things have to be true. All three, and in this order.
- You registered before your individual deadline.
- You were present in a covered location between September 11, 2001 and May 30, 2002.
- You have a 9/11-related physical condition certified by the WTC Health Program — or approved through the private physician process, which is available in limited circumstances.
It is not only first responders
This is the misunderstanding that keeps the most people from filing. The VCF makes no distinction between responders and survivors when it evaluates a claim. The covered group is far wider than firefighters and police:
- Rescue, recovery and cleanup workers — including volunteers
- Sanitation workers and those who handled the debris
- People who lived downtown
- People who worked below Canal Street — office workers, building staff, commercial cleaners, window washers
- Students who attended school in the area
- People who were simply passing through
Covered locations are the NYC Exposure Zone — Manhattan south of Canal Street, river to river — along with the debris removal routes and sites, and the Pentagon and Shanksville sites.
Those debris removal sites matter enormously on Staten Island, because that is where the material went. If you worked at the landfill, we cover that in detail on our page for Fresh Kills 9/11 responders.
What conditions count
Only physical conditions certified by the WTC Health Program qualify. The list is long and includes many cancers, respiratory and digestive conditions, and certain musculoskeletal conditions.
One limit to be clear about: the VCF does not compensate a mental health condition on its own. That is a real hardship for people whose 9/11 injury was psychological, and it is better to know it now than to learn it partway through a claim.
What the fund pays
Compensation covers three things:
- Lost wages and benefits caused by an eligible condition
- Non-economic loss — pain and suffering
- Past out-of-pocket medical expenses, where they exceed $5,000
What a lawyer can charge you
This one is set by statute, and it is worth knowing before you hire anybody. An attorney may not charge more than 10 percent of your VCF award.
If you previously settled a 9/11 lawsuit and were represented in that too, the cap covers both together: the attorney’s total charge for both matters cannot exceed 10 percent of your total award across the two.
There is a narrow exception for certain non-routine expenses — obtaining medical records, certified translation, long-distance travel, economic analysis for a business valuation — and those require the Special Master’s approval in advance, with an itemized statement. Anything else above 10 percent is not permitted.
Where the Zadroga Act fits
People still ask about the Zadroga Bill, and the name causes confusion because it has been amended so many times.
The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, passed in 2010, is what reopened the compensation fund and created the World Trade Center Health Program. It was named for a New York City police detective who died of a respiratory disease after working at Ground Zero. The act has been extended and amended since, most significantly by the 2019 permanent authorization described above.
So the Zadroga Act is the foundation, but it is not the current state of the law by itself. If you read something written before 2019 that describes the fund as expiring, that page is out of date.
How to start
- Register. You can do it online at claims.vcf.gov or by phone at 1-855-885-1555. It takes very little, and it preserves the right to file later.
- Get into the WTC Health Program if you are not already, and get your condition certified. Certification is what makes a claim filable.
- Then file, with the documentation of your presence, your condition and your losses.
If you take nothing else from this page: do step one now, even if you feel fine. Registration is free, it commits you to nothing, and it is the step whose deadline is already running.
These claims do not replace your other rights
A VCF claim is a federal program, separate from New York workers’ compensation. A worker whose 9/11 exposure has made them sick may have a comp claim as well, and the two run on different tracks with different rules and different clocks.
Where a condition has developed over years from the nature of the work rather than from one incident, the comp side is handled as an occupational disease claim, which has its own rules about when the clock starts.
Talk to a Staten Island 9/11 attorney
Staten Island sent a great many people to Ground Zero and to the landfill, and a great many of them are only now finding out what the exposure did. If you are somewhere in that story — registered or not, sick or not, certified or not — it is worth a conversation.
Call (718) 701-2776. The consultation costs nothing, and you will speak with me.
Nothing on this page is legal advice about your own claim, and the VCF sets its own rules and procedures. Registration and filing are done through the VCF directly at vcf.gov; you do not need a lawyer to register, and registering costs nothing.