Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Department of Justice Emails Description An account of the resource The Department of Justice received more than 11,000 e-mails in response to the agency's public solicitation for comments upon its plans to distribute the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 established by Congress to benefit the victims of September 11 and their families. These e-mails have been organized here by date. September 11 Email September 11 Email: Body The basic content, as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end. Wednesday, November 07, 2001 10:34 PM the forgotten victims My understanding is that victims of the September 11th tragedy are defined as families of those who perished as well as individuals who are now unemployed and/or businesses that sustained prolonged closures) as a result of the attacks. However, there is a population of individuals and families who I believe do not qualify under the accepted definition of victims... but these are people whose lives have been turned upside down since September 11th. These "victims" live or lived in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero, they are the residents of Battery Park City -I speak from personal experience. Our apartment was three blocks from "the site" of the collapsed World Trade Center- 400 Chambers Street. While our apartment did not sustain any damage, the building was contaminated with dust and debris which had to be removed by a company specializing in handling Hazardous Materials. I guess we were lucky [If you consider seeing what we saw, lucky] from our dining room window we watched people jumping and the tower collapsing and quickly closed the windows before evacuating with our daughter and pug. Many of my neighbors found that their apartments were covered with debris because they left their windows open. Everyone in the neighborhood was prohibited from occupying their apartments for a period of time, FBI and police designated the area a crime scene. Emergency and rescue workers commandeered buildings and streets and my daughter's school was turned into "The Command Center" which included a temporary morgue. For many weeks, the area belonged to the authorities. In the past two months or so, many buildings have been preparing for residents to occupy, but many in the neighborhood cannot return or refuse to return because of the air (toxins emanating from the still-burning fires) causes respiratory distress, nosebleeds, asthma, headaches, and the other health risks associated with this unprecedented event. While we have been assured by the EPA that the air poses no long-term health risks, the Daily News and other respected Newspapers and Engineers have disagreed. Residents, businessmen and women are suffering from symptoms that make the area a health nightmare. My particular building has been re-opened, Transportation is significantly reduced (and will be for many years). Services are greatly diminished [many stores have permanently abandoned the area because they of the lack of consumers in the area] Air quality is compromised [we've been told that our children should not exert themselves when playing outdoors.]. The area is uninhabitable, after a long hard look at the situation my family was forced to move uptown 3 miles. There are serious financial considerations for downtown residents, and businesses but the emotional toll is hard to quantify. My family has been so traumatized by the September 11th events and our relocation that it has affected my family business. We were out of work 18 days yet we had to continue to pay ourselves even though we were not producing any income. Running a small business in New York is extremely tough right now. We had reduced our operating expense significantly pre September 11, 2001 but now we are finding that our clients budgets have been cut and projects that we had been expecting are now put on hold with no future commencement dates. We have applied for an SBA loan and were accepted but it is pending one of the partners putting up their home as collateral. We have renters insurance and while my insurance company covered our living expenses and temporary housing for a few weeks they are not covering the expenses associated with the relocation of our home. We have incurred significant out-of-pocket expenses, $14,663.05, Moving, storage, loosing our security deposit, brokers fees and an increase in rent. Safe Horizons was the only agency that provided immediate financial relief [$1500.00] but our particular situation did not fit the qualifications from other Federal or state agencies like FEMA, the American Red Cross, Crime Victims Board and the Salvation Army. I find this absurd, with all of the money that has been donated to the victims of this tragedy why do the people who have been directly affected by this have to beg for financial assistance? Why does the American Red Cross give to some and not others? Like us, many have chosen to move to other parts of the City, some have left the city altogether, Others have chosen to stay and rebuild. All have suffered. We are victims too. Rebuilding? Individual Comment September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2001-11-07 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource dojW000213.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. email Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2001-11-07