Cleanup at NY completed after 9/11

[Charean]

THE WORDLESS service marking the end of the 8-month cleanup was to begin at 10:29 a.m. - the time the second tower collapsed - in the seven-story pit that once was the basement of the twin skyscrapers before they were felled on Sept. 11.

After a ceremonial ringing of the fire department bell, to commemorate the 343 fallen firefighters, the processional was to move up a 500-foot ramp out of the pit.

Of the more than 2,800 people killed in the attack, 1,102 have been identified. Nearly 20,000 body parts have been recovered.

New York City officials said the sifting for body parts in a city landfill will continue and the identification process will go on for months. Those human remains that cannot be identified will be retained, in case new technology someday makes it possible.

The unprecedented cleanup effort finished several months earlier than originally anticipated and at a fraction of the estimated cost. But while many victims have been identified, the end of the operation leaves numerous others without their family members‚ remains.

“To not have anything recovered, it‚s just such an empty feeling,” said Jennifer Tarantino, 32, of Bayonne, N.J., whose husband died in the attacks. “It‚s so final. Your husband goes to work one day and that’s it, you never see him again.”

On Thursday, a truck was to follow the stretcher, carrying the trade center’s last steel beam, which stood until Tuesday night, when it was cut down during a ceremony for ground zero workers.

Not much to add to this. Your article says it all.

[Megabot]

And it is a Memorial Ceremony on Monday for this to!
[img]graemlins/usa.gif[/img]

[ 05-30-2002, 03:47 PM: Message edited by: Megabot ]

[Cloudbringer]

One of the steel beams from WTC is up here near where I work and live. There will be a memorial created around it later this year.

[RudeDawg]

[img]graemlins/usa.gif[/img]

[johnny]

so what are they gonna do with the place ? Build new towers ?

[slackerboy]

i dont know if anybody knows at this point.

[Alexander]

They should build either the two towers up again, or perhaps just one big one, and have a memorial down below and in the lobby for those that died.

It would show triumph, and it would say to the terrorists that if you blow up our stuff, after we come after you we're going to build it right back up again, and there's nothing you can to about it.

Just some more detailed press from Reuters:

NEW YORK (May 30) - What began on Sept. 11 with the scream of crashing jetliners, the roar of falling steel and the deaths of thousands ended on Thursday in a silence broken only by the solemn tolling of bells, the wail of bagpipes and the sobs of those mourning the loved ones they lost.

With an empty stretcher bearing a folded American flag, New York marked the end of the mammoth recovery of human remains and the ruins of the World Trade Center with a brief ceremony, nearly nine months after two hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers, destroying them and killing 2,823 people.

The empty stretcher symbolized those killed but whose remains were never found. More than 19,000 body parts were recovered but 1,800 victims have yet to be identified.

There were no speeches by politicians, no prayers by the clergy. At 10:29 a.m. the moment on Sept. 11 the second of the 110-story buildings collapsed in a pile of mangled and broken steel, concrete and glass, a firefighter tolled a bell in four sets of five chimes, the traditional code for a fallen comrade.

The brief 20-minute ceremony under a clear blue sky at what has become known as "ground zero" was a moving tribute to all of those connected to the site and many involved spoke of the city's determination to rebuild.

"It is really tough but we are going to build it again," said fourth generation ironworker John Finamore, who first visited the site as a 6-year-old 37 years ago when his grandfather helped build the towers. ''They are not going to take it away from us.''

Although Thursday's ceremony saw the official end of the clean-up at the 16-acre site, investigators will continue sifting through debris at the landfill on Staten Island in the quest to identify more human remains.

Before the hijacked plane attacks, blamed on Islamic militants of the Al Qaida network, the twin towers dominated the lower Manhattan skyline from their completion in 1973, a symbol of New York's financial might in the world's most important business district. The New York Stock Exchange also observed two minutes of silence.

THE MOMENT THE SECOND TOWER FELL

Police and fire department pipers and drummers marched behind the stretcher. A flatbed truck slowly rolled out the last 36-foot long, 58-ton steel girder to be removed from the site. The beam, the last standing piece of the North Tower removed in a separate ceremony on Tuesday night, was wrapped in black muslin adorned with a bouquet of flowers and U.S. flag.

The procession paused at the top of the ramp, buglers from the uniformed services played "Taps" and five New York Police Department helicopters flew in V formation overhead. The pipes and drums unit of police and fire officers played ''America the Beautiful'' and the crowd applauded for a full five minutes for a procession of civilians and uniformed personnel.

A woman clutching a framed enlarged wedding photograph was held steady by two officers. A fire chief jumped out of the line to clasp the arm of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose calm and compassion helped New Yorkers through their worst crisis.

In a written statement, Giuliani's successor Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "Almost nine months have passed since a barbaric attack changed us forever. Soon, we will begin the process of planning how we will memorialize and how we will rebuild. Today is a day to remember those we lost and honor those who worked so hard and wanted so badly to bring all of them home."

PATRIOTISM

The procession traveled 15 blocks north along the West Side Highway, which was lined with white gloved, uniformed police officers and thousands of spectators, many of them relatives of the dead and many dressed in patriotic red, white and blue.

"All Gave Some, Some Gave All, 9-11-01," was the slogan on the back of many a T-shirt.

A separate ceremony will be held for families of the victims on Sunday.

"Everyone who has been here and worked here ceaselessly maybe knew this day would come," said John Hulteen, a Salvation Army volunteer who counseled workers at the site for more than eight months. "There are a lot of tears and joy, but to be able to release themselves from the camaraderie is overwhelming. The bonding of the people involved here has been overwhelming."

In the months after the attacks, a mini-city sprang up around the site to feed thousands who labored to clear the way for new construction. There was no further loss of life and no major injury in the massive cleanup that was completed three months ahead of schedule and under budget.

The dust was still settling at the site of the collapsed World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11 when the first emergency and recovery workers began to move 1.6 million tons of debris -- the equivalent of 20 Golden Gate Bridges.

Within hours, the site was filled with thousands of fire, police and medical officials, more than 1,000 sanitation workers and an undetermined number of construction workers and other volunteers. Fires burned for three months in the rubble, which stood seven stories high and went eight stories underground.

Cloudbringer,
Why would your community build a memorial around one of the beams?
Just curious...if you are not in New York City, it seems like its just a bit of overkil.
Some type of memorial at ground zero should be enough, maybe another one at the firestation (40?) where so many members of one station were lost.

(Edited to remove the name of the landfill.)

[ 05-31-2002, 01:02 AM: Message edited by: Moni ]

[Ziroc]

I made a point of getting up early to watch this. VERY hard, even now to watch or listen to the people talk about it.. In a way, it touches a deeper nerve than my Mom passing--I mean in a different way. My Mom died at 75 years old and was 1 person. My Mom lived a long and wonderful life, but 1000's of young and.. you know. I still miss my Mom badly. Mother's Day was very hard

It does hurt more to me in different ways (My Mom passing), but the 9/11 attacks were just...no words can explain it. When they carried the empty stretcher out, I just lost it. VERY hard, but you know, they did this to try to make us all scared and stuff and to break our morale, but I personally feel it has REALLY brought the entire United States (and even over seas) together, and we are all stronger than ever. UNITED.

It's still a VERY raw nerve with me, and I think it will always be. After 9/11 a few weeks or so, we were driving, and stopped at a light, and on the radio the song "Glad to be an American" was playing, and I was looking at the cars around me--nearly EVERY car had the American Flag displayed, and I got all teared up. [img]smile.gif[/img] Something like that makes me feel so good about America.

I think in a way 9/11 helped bring everyone 'down to earth' so to speak--to remember what is petty and what isn't. Enjoy life. Be kind, and respectful. I was losing faith in a way in Americans with all the rude drivers, cell phone people cutting ya off, and just basic rudeness, but since then, it really changed, I've seen people say hi or smile and nod to strangers when we are walking into a store from the Parking lot. It's nice. I hope it lasts.

NEVER FORGET.

Dan