The primary compensation fund for victims of the Boston Marathon bombings has garnered upwards of $50 million and received more than 200 applications for payments, according to the fund’s administrators.
The One Fund Boston received 212 claims by the Saturday postmark deadline, with additional applications known to be en route to the fund’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. in courier mail, according to Camille Biros, the deputy fund administrator.
The June 15 deadline marked two months to the day since twin explosions went off at the marathon's finish line, killing three and injuring over 260 people.
“We are still receiving applications. Typically, many applications come near or on the deadline,” Biros said Monday. “We don’t know what the ultimate number will be.”
Any requests postmarked past deadline will be reviewed and distributed on a "case-by-case" basis, Biros said. The fund hopes to have payments in claimants' hands by July 1, she said.
The distribution protocol, finalized in May, will prioritize deaths, double amputees, and victims who sustained brain damage, followed by single amputees and then people whose injuries required an overnight hospital stay.
Families of four people killed – three by the April 15 explosions and one MIT campus police officer killed by the suspects days later — are eligible for payments, but Biros on Friday declined to say whether those four families had applied for compensation.
Applicants were required to fill out a three-page form, available on the fund’s official website. The form asks claimants to specify the nature of any injuries and the duration of the hospital stay. It also requires a hospital statement confirming that the purported injuries were sustained during the attack.
Fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg has said that, despite the sum of money in the fund’s coffers, claimants should 'lower their expectations' about the impact of potential payouts.
“Whatever we do with this fund is inadequate,” Feinberg, 68, said at a town hall-style meeting in May. “Everyone, please lower your expectations about this fund. If you had a billion dollars, you would not have enough money to deal with the problems with these attacks.”
Feinberg has managed compensation for families damaged by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre; and the shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech.