October 29, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:How many really died in the WTC?
They've removed forty people from the list of the WTC dead because their families couldn't prove that they were in the buildings and no remains were identified. Mostly they were illegal workers whose jobs weren't documented, or people whose families had nothing more than a vague notion that they might have been in the area.
It's odd to think about, isn't it? We have a nice, solid number of the dead, but it only gives us an illusion of precision. Presumably there's at least one lonely soul with few friends or family who wandered into the path of the buildings and never emerged.
And presumably there are also people whose families believed they died in the buildings, but who are still very much alive. I remember readings something about a train wreck in Britain which killed thirty, but in which three or four people simply went missing. Apparently they'd taken the opportunity to go walkabout and have everyone think they were dead. (I'm afraid I don't recall the details of how the police determined that they weren't dead.) The audacity of it boggles the mind -- could you, in a split second, witness a disaster and make the irrevocable decision to abandon your life in favor of the unknown?
Pity the families, anyway, of the forty removed from the list. They didn't just lose the benefits that will accrue to survivors; they lost the sense of finality that a name on a list can give you.
Posted by Jane Galt at October 29, 2003 12:17 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksWhen I heard about this phenomenon it started me wondering what percentage of people would, on a split second decision, choose to "change their stars?" Walkout of the life your living and begin to craft a new one from scratch. How many people are so restless or living such "lives of quiet desperation" that they want a blank slate?
I predict lawsuits - probably in the next 10 days. I believe this decision will make those families inelgible for all nifty government benefits passed especially for the families of victims of 9/11.
Some lives are easier to walk away from than others, though.
I've heard stories (nothing concrete, so may just be urban legend) about Vietnam soldiers doing the same thing. Going AWOL after a skirmish and more or less 'going native.' Interesting question when they are found with a local new wife and family--what do you tell the family at home?
I think that there are a handful of people who've tried to fake their own deaths via the WTC attack in order to get insurance money, etc. They've been publicized here in NYC, but it hasn't been a flood. There may be a handful of that sort in the 40+ names removed, but I think there are other things involved as well.
Apparently some of the people who were listed as missing, presumed dead, but actually survived, were undocumented aliens. They may not have come forward to be taken off the list for fear of being deported. Other folks were homeless who were known to frequent the WTC, but who've been located since the attack.
It's a mixed bag of reasons. There are a few who've dropped out for whatever reason, I'm sure, but that doesn't explain it all. My two cents, take it or leave it!
One thing I wonder is how one could start over. If you were a citizen, you'd lose all sorts of benefits and it would be considerably more difficult to land a job. Basically, you'd downgrade your status down to an illegal immigrant. It's not impossible, but it is a big change.
Though if you're walking away from your life, you're probably not leaving much behind.
This is a story that was going around Maine and New Hampshire about 20 years ago. I can not vouch for the story, and am sure that there are many others just like it.
Apparently an electrician for the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was supposed to conduct sea trials aboard one of the boats just being finished. But his shop had given his assignment to someone else without telling him. He gets to work, finds out that he is not going to sea for 3 to 5 days, and decides, instead of going back home, to visit a lady friend for the weekend.
When he emerged from the weekend alone with his lady friend, he found he had to explain why, when the USS Thresher went down, he was still alive to his wife and kids. Not listening to the news, he did not know he was supposed to be dead, until it was too late.
This reminds me of a passage in _The Maltese Falcon_. It's Sam Spade's story of the Flitcraft case. Flitcraft was a wealthy businessman, husband, and father who disappeared one day with no warning. He had no gambling debts, no mistress, no secret vices. His business was intact, no money missing. Years later he was spotted in a distant town, and Spade was sent to check him out. And this is what had happened: Flitcraft had been walking down the street when a piece of steel fell off a building under construction and missed him by inches. When he recovered from the initial shock, he found that suddenly his entire life made no sense: it was all crazy and scary. He had to get away instantly. So he took off - hopping trains and working day labor till he was far away. See http://fallingbeam.org/beam.htm for the original passage.
"Late Matia Pascal" is a great Pirandello novel about a man who goes along with the his hometown's belief that he drowned. Pirandello establishes an utterly plausible scenario whereby a man might decide to walk away from everything for the prospect of an unencomberd fresh start.
It's not at all surprising that people have tried to take advantage of the WTC attacks for personal gain. Extreme egotism and shelfishness are aspects of humanity.
I knew a guy who probably committed suicide, but I've always had a suspicion that he may have just decided to disappear. He was a brilliant engineer who bought into the 60's crapola about LSD "opening up your mind" or whatever, and proceeded to destroy his career and his life. One day not long after his wife died and his youngest kid graduated from high school, the Coast Guard found his boat out in the middle of Grand Traverse Bay, empty. Then it was discovered that in the last few days before this, he had systematically transferred every asset that he still owned except the boat to his children. So, did he take the boat out 5-10 miles from land and jump out, or did he point it towards the middle and jump out near land?
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