WTC_HR_InterviewComments

........ I did the registry today for my daughter who is in high school. Don't bother to register yourself unless you were there on 9/11 or worked on the clean-up, since you won't qualify. I think this outside company is not such a great idea - Although the questioner was very polite and helpful he could not pronounce the name of the school -- and there were other silly things like that -- since he was from North Carolina. That kind of unfamiliarity may be an impediment. Also, they ask specific health questions which you are required mostly to answer from a list of multiple choice answers that don't always fit your answer.

I thought of another thing. I had to write down what I told him so that in 2 years when it is my daughter's turn to respond (over 18, they do it, under 18 you do it by proxy as parent) she will know the stuff I remember about her that she will not- eg, eye irritation, throat irritation, all that stuff that happened earlier on- and some silly one time things that I remember, like a weird rash in March........

One more thing, he mentioned a confirmation number and then never gave it. It can be used to follow up with something you forgot, for example. And since I was supposed to add ss#, now I don't know how to get back to them to add it. I guess I can simply call when I get some time.

Here are a few more important points to keep in mind when answering the survey. The questions focus on physical injuries and such that took place on 9/11 and on whether you worked on the pile. I added as a note (you can make a point to do this if any category does not ask about your stuff) that my kid spent time in the school next to the barge operation with the trucks transferring the debris all hours back and forth and spewing the dust without protection, and etc. They have no questions which match that risk factor. I did NOT remember to mention the fact that the school ventilation was not cleaned until July 2002. They have no questions relating to school children's experience, the barge operation from October 2001-June 2003 and uncleaned areas in the schools.

When I follow up to give in her SS# I will try to add that tidbit also. I really think that it is important for each of us to add those 2 points as our own risk factors which they do not include, i.e., the barge operation next to school and uncleaned ventilation system. They do ask the date of return- which was October 9.

I believe the whole effort is still worth....... doing, just to make sure that your kid's name is listed for future reference, since nobody else is collecting it. It took about 30 minutes to do, but was not difficult or anything. Also, watch out for mental health questions- some stuff you may not know the answers to unless you have all the details from your child for Sept. 11th --- and the interviewers do ask what they saw very specifically, pretty gory for me even though I did not experience it first hand and simply had to recount her tale. If you have not discussed these things with your child, you will not be prepared.

-- Lori, parent of Stuyvesant student, Sept. 20, 2003

DOH called this evening for the interview. They said I couldn't speak on behalf of my kid, then changed their mind and did the interview with me. Asked if he was south of Chambers on 911. I said he was ON Chambers. This was too complicated for them: was he south of Chambers?

Interviewer wanted to know his social security number and income but didn't mind being given the brush.

When it was over they asked if they could contact him in the future. I said, No. Could they put other agencies in touch with him? No. What is his email address?

-- Jenna, parent of Stuyvesant student, September 23, 2003

Oiy. I have just gotten off the phone with the Registry following up on my on-line registration.. A very polite and "slow" young man informed me that he was in a room with about 20 other guys in NY, that there was another call center in the Carolinas and that the interview would take about 30 minutes... let's see, that's 20 guys for 8 hours doing 2 calls an hour. that is 320 x' 2 (the one in N. Carolina.) That means they can complete about 600 forms a day...

Of course my interview took longer because he kept having to go ask his supervisor questions. Throughout the interview this very sweet and cooperative young man kept reiterating the boundaries. The questions were for north of Chambers and Canal Streets. The "site" is the pile and includes Rector Street.

The 1st questions are very specifically confined to 9/11 and GZ. Then the questions get broken out into 12-18 and 18-24 SEPT (can't remember dates- but less than a week.) If I had not persisted I would not have gotten registered because they were looking for affiliations and I had trouble getting him to find the box for unaffiliated. ALSO they were looking for "shift" data [morning, night, or graveyard] not appropriate to "good Samaritans".

I would have to guess that if I did not speak English and I did not have a specific mission to see what this was about. I would have presumed myself ineligible from the start and given up. The short northern border (Chambers) is of concern.*

-- Diane, Oct. 7, 2003

*Editors' note: To be eligible, office workers and visitors to the area had to be below Chambers Street on September 11. Students and staff (pre K-12) or younger ones in day care had to be south of Canal on 9/11. The only groups that could have been anywhere on 9/11 and still be eligible are residents living south of Canal on 9/11, and workers and volunteers involved in rescue and recovery operations.

We are concerned that the fact that office workers (a huge population) had to be south of Chambers on 9/11, as opposed to south of Canal like school children and personnel, or absent from the area on 9/11 but re-occupants of buildings like residents, could seriously skew the numbers towards health effects that were caused by exposure to the plume as opposed to indoor contamination.

I had the interview 2 weeks ago. I am a resident, below Chambers Street.

The way the questions are structured and the fact that the interviewer is reading a script makes it difficult to provide thorough answers. You can only provide one of the following answers for a majority of the questions: "All of the time", "Most of the time", "Some of the time" "A little" or "Never." I had a very difficult time answering the questions this way because I didn't know the overall time period for which I needed to provide answers. For instance, I suffered a rash "All of the Time" for the first month after the collapse, but never after that. I didn't know how to answer the interviewer because she was not interested in the comment about the first month, she just wanted to hear one of the 5 predefined answers.

Another question was setup improperly: "Did you suffer any other symptoms that we did not already cover in the call?" I told her of 3 other illnesses that were not covered in the interview. Then she asked me if I suffered ALL THREE (AS A GROUP) "All of the time", "Most of the time", "Some of the time", "A little" or "Never" because the script didn't allow her to account for 3 additional illnesses, just 1. So she ended up asking the question in the context of the first illness I stated - I don't know if the other 2 illnesses even made it into the survey.

One other odd thing is that they did not ask me directly if I received a diagnosis for any emotional problems, like depression, anxiety, or PTSD. I fully expected a few survey questions to ask specifics about mental health because it was (and I still believe it is) one of the
most common diagnoses received by people. The mental health questions were vague, once again, because of the multiple choice answers. The survey was slanted at finding out about physical symptoms and illnesses, not so much emphasis on the emotional.

However, I think it is worthwhile to register and find out if you are qualified to enroll - even if you did not experience any physical symptoms -- someone will find that data interesting in the future as well.

-- Kelly, October 20, 2003

I did the WTC Registry Phone interview on Saturday and I was very disappointed in the content and the format of the questions. You had to choice one answer from a multiple choice and my responses don't always neatly fit into the given choices. Also, 6x as much on mental as physical/environmental. So our home is in the WTC immediate zone, so am I a first responder? Confusing... although we didn't move back in till Jan. 2002 I was at home cleaning up/organizing/fixing almost every school day making our home liveable so that we could. They ask whether the children saw anyone jumping, but not whether they saw the big cloud or whether they saw the WTC ruins or the firemen raking the rubble or the people of uniform lining up..... It's apparent that there was no WTC resident involved in the making of the questionnaire.

-- annonymous, November 5, 2003