People who were employed or who volunteered in World Trade Center operations in the year after September 11 need to register their service with New York State to remain eligible for future workers' compensation benefits, should they ever need them.
The two-year window to report a workplace injury was extended by New York for the rescue, recovery and clean-up of the World Trade Center. A large number of firefighters and emergency services personnel from outside New York City did duty at the Pile, at Fresh Kills landfill, and on the barges, the piers and at the morgues. The state is actively reaching out to people who did this work through Sept. 12, 2002, and asking them to file an eight-question form, the WTC-12, with the New York State Workers' Compensation Board. This preserves their eligibility for benefits.
The Board is operating a major campaign to alert the estimated 50,000 people across the country who are probably eligible to register. There will be television and radio spots, in English and Spanish, with former New York Yankee Bernie Williams, as well as direct contact with self-identified WTC workers and the firms that employed them. The Board has opened a new toll-free line for these calls, 1 877 WTC12-08. There's also a new web site, www.WTC12.org, that people can access to download a form and get information.
Volunteers and workers have until Aug. 14, 2008, to file with the New York State Workers' Compensation Board.
