Few Boston Victims Have Sought Help From One Fund

But officials loathe to move June deadline
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 6, 2013 12:13 PM CDT
Few Boston Victims Have Sought Help From One Fund
In this April 23, 2013 file photo, Kenneth Feinberg, an attorney who managed the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, speaks at a news conference in Boston.   (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

The public has given fairly generously to the One Fund, the fund set up to aid Boston Marathon bombing victims, filling its war chest with almost $40 million. There's just one problem: Only about 50 people have applied for help so far, out of the roughly 250 the fund was expecting. But administrator Kenneth Feinberg is resisting calls to push back the June 15 application deadline, the New York Times reports, saying he was told to try to turn the money around quickly.

"People procrastinate. They wait, they hem, they haw," Feinberg reasons, predicting that "we will see over the next seven days a flood of claims, and then the last three or four days we will get even more." But lawyers and health care professionals for the victims say it's a tough deadline for many patients, especially those with brain and nervous system problems. "It's a very fast timeline," says an official at one Boston hospital. "I think it's a lot to ask of people who have been traumatized." (More Kenneth Feinberg stories.)

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