Marathon Survivors Still Looking for One Fund Help

(NECN: Ally Donnelly) - Bill Iffrig keeps a journal of every run he's made over the last 40 years.

"There we go. There's my Boston," he said pointing to the entry in his garage-turned-running shrine in Lake Stevens, Wash. But the 79-year-old doesn't need notes to remember his last Boston Marathon. He was about to cross the finish line when the first bomb exploded.  

"My legs are just out of it," he said. "And I could feel myself going down."

Iffrig may look familiar. He's the athlete captured in an iconic photograph that quickly made it's way onto the cover of Sports Illustrated and around the globe. Even though the elderly runner was slammed to the ground, he waived off help.

"I said, hey I don't really need that wheelchair," he said seeing victims far worse off than he. "Why don't you use it for one of these other people. I'm, I'm okay."

It was back home in Seattle, a few days later that Iffrig realized he was indeed hurt. His doctor told him he had tendon damage to his leg, a shattered eardrum and needed hearing aids. The hearing aids cost $3,500 out-of-pocket -- a lot of money for the retired paper mill worker -- but he paid it assuming the One Fund Boston would be there for him.

"I haven't heard anything more from them," he said. "So, there's nothing happening, I guess."

Marty Healy with the Massachusetts Bar Association said, "It's indisputable that he's been injured, it's indisputable that he was there and it really says something about the administration of the fund at this point that they're not coming forward and compensating folks who aren't looking for a lot of money that have very demonstrable injuries."

Massachusetts Bar Association is handling the cases of about two dozen people pro bono who want help from the One Fund. They say their injuries from the bombings range from broken bones and hearing loss to PTSD and traumatic brain injury, but Healy says many haven't gotten more than a cursory reply from the One Fund.

Joanna Leigh, a Boston financial consultant talked with NECN from her Jamaica Plain home where she says she is a shut in.

"I want people to know that just because you can't see injury, it doesn't mean it's not catastrophic," she said.

Leigh says she suffered a traumatic brain injury from the second blast as she ran into the crowd to help. The Boston financial consultant says she now has trouble standing, concentrating. She can't work, drive or read.

But, we asked, "You didn't go to the hospital, you didn't get into an ambulance, none of those things?"

"No," she answered. "it wasn't appropriate. I wasn't losing a limb, I wasn't unconscious."

And that, Massachusetts Bar Association President Doug Sheff says, is a problem. When the initial $61 million was raised for Marathon victims and their families, the distribution process was described by then-administrator Ken Feinberg as rough justice. The criteria was broken into four categories. With Category A -- loss of life, double amputation or permanent brain damage -- paying out the most: nearly $2.1 million per recipient. For to Category D cases, $8,000 for injured survivors treated on an emergency outpatient basis. Because Joanna was treated as an outpatient, logging no nights in the hospital, she received $8,000 instead of the higher payout for permanent brain damage which she fears she has.  

"You've got to be comatose, you've got to be hospitalized and that's not what brain injury is all about. It's beyond me that she isn't getting help right now," Sheff said.

For what was happening at the time, rough justice seems reasonable. Get the money into the hands of the people that need it most, quickly. But it's been a year says Massachusetts Bar and there are people who are still hurting. Shouldn't the process be reconsidered they wonder? More deliberate? More nuanced?  

Jim Gallagher, president of the One Fund, said, "That's exactly what we're deliberating now."  

Gallagher says from the get-go, their intention was to help those -- "most affected" by the Marathon bombings -- and people like Bill Iffrig didn't make the cut.   

"There isn't enough money to help everybody who needs it in a meaningful way," Gallagher said. "There never will be."  

Right now, there is about $12 million in the fund and no one knows how much more could come in as the Marathon approaches. Gallagher says they hope to make a second round of payouts in July when things calm down, but again, it won't be an easy process. They've gotten together a group of survivors and medical experts to see how to best distribute the money and may expand the protocol to cover survivors who suffered hearing loss or mental health issues but it will likely be in the form of programs not cash payouts.

If we started making distributions by way of a check to each one, it would not be very effective.  

Massachusetts Bar argues that the pool of additional people asking for help is small -- so far, just a few dozen -- so why not let individuals go before the new panel, present medical records, tell those reviewing the cases how they've been affected? If it's not a big pool, why not just deal with it? We ask. He countered, "We don't know yet." He means, they don't know yet what will happen if they expand the protocol for who can get help. He worries hundreds, even thousands, could ask for money from the fund.

"We don't have the bandwith to operate on that level at all," Gallagher said.

So where does that leave people looking for help now? Gallagher would not discuss individual cases, but when asked about cases like Joanna Leigh's, he said traumatic brain injury is a controversial diagnosis and likely won't be addressed by the One Fund.  

"This is very difficult for the medical community to even agree upon whether it exists," Gallagher said. "what are the sources of it? Was anybody in the blast zone, affected in a way that would have produced that kind of trauma?"

As for Bill Iffrig, the retiree says he's not looking to strike it rich. He's not even looking for compensation for his leg. He just wants a few thousand dollars for hearing aids.  

Gallagher remained unapologetic. "It's not an insurance company. It's not a claim for benefits. It's a community trying to help a lot of people who were injured as best we can," he said.

A lot of people, but, perhaps, not everyone.

Copyright NECNMIGR - NECN
Contact Us