Victims' Remains Found Near Ground Zero

n the week since a ceremony marked the end of the recovery effort at ground zero, Fire Department and construction crews have found the remains of about a dozen victims in nearby buildings damaged in the Sept. 11 attack.

City officials had long suspected they might find additional human remains in these adjacent structures, including 90 West Street and 130 Cedar Street, office buildings that were struck and punctured by plane parts and sections of the twin towers. But they had put off the task of thoroughly sifting through this debris until after the work was largely finished at the immediate World Trade Center site.

Now, working day and night over the last week or so, recovery crews have discovered small bone fragments, a jaw with the teeth still intact, even parts of racks that held the luggage from one of the hijacked planes.

No date for the completion of this effort has been declared, in part because firefighters have had trouble getting into the last large building that must be searched, 130 Liberty Street, which is owned by Deutsche Bank and is commonly known as the Bankers Trust building.

The delay, which has angered some victims' families, is a result of concern by Deutsche Bank officials that the search may stir up contaminants that can pollute the air, bank officials said. They noted that a temporary pedestrian walkway to Battery Park City passes in front of the building.

"It is shameful," Susan Ryan said of the delay. Ms. Ryan, who has worked as a volunteer at ground zero since March, lost a relative in the attacks, Terence McShane, 37, a firefighter whose remains have been identified. "The Fire Department has done the job; they ought to be able to finish the job," she said.

Fire Department officials, who expressed optimism that an arrangement would soon be worked out to enter 130 Liberty Street, said yesterday that they were determined to continue the work until every last possible bit of debris had been examined.

"The date the mayor chose for the ceremony was symbolic," said Deputy Assistant Chief Edward D. Kalletta Jr., who is supervising the continuing recovery effort. "We knew we weren't going to be finished that day."

Fire Department and other city officials said they had been deprived of easy access to the nearby buildings during the last eight months of intensive and dangerous work at the immediate trade center site. For instance, in searching 130 Cedar, workers are now using a crane that would have been hard to set up until recently because of the machinery and workers around ground zero.

The focus of the recovery in the last week has been 90 West Street, a 23-story landmark at the southwest corner of the site that was devastated by an out-of-control fire, and neighboring 130 Cedar Street, a 12-story building with a hole blown through its roof.

Shortly after the attack, rescue workers searched the buildings and recovered two office workers who had died in an elevator at 90 West Street. They also found large sections of one of the airplanes, including passenger seats, which had landed on the roof and scaffolding that had been on 90 West Street.

Visits by fire officials with search dogs in recent weeks suggested that human remains were still present, presumably thrown there from the falling buildings or the crashed planes. So the city, working with the building owners, decided to sift through debris as painstakingly as it had searched the material recovered from ground zero.

At 130 Cedar Street yesterday, crews scoured the upper floors for human remains, focusing only on sections of the structure where windows were broken, and therefore where debris, and possible body parts, could have landed inside.

Contractors tore down drop ceilings, pulled out furniture and demolished wall panels in search of remains and swept everything into bags that they dropped out the window into a large steel box that had been lifted into the air by a crane.

Much of that debris was carried down to the ground zero pit, where it was meticulously raked to make sure no body parts were missed. Left behind was a strange interior space, which had once housed a printing company and other offices, stripped of everything tiny, leaving only large chunks of broken concrete, abandoned printing machines and burn marks.

During these searches, body parts have been found in the gutter and drainpipes on the roof of 90 West Street. At 130 Cedar Street yesterday, workers found the jaw and intact teeth on the roof parapet of the 11th floor, where the brick and terra cotta facade had been smashed.

The recovery work at these two buildings is scheduled to be completed over this weekend, the officials predicted.

"We are not going above and beyond," said Charlie Vitchers, general superintendent of Bovis Lend Lease, the contractor working at 90 West and 130 Cedar. "We are doing what has to be done."

Rohini Pragasam, a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank, said the bank is working with the city to try to come up with a recovery plan that is acceptable so that work can begin at 130 Liberty. She did not offer an estimate as to how long it would take to reach such an accord. It is also not clear how long the search for human remains would last at 130 Liberty, a 40-story tower. Dozens of windows were blown out and a 40-foot-wide gash was torn in its north face from the ground to the 24th floor.

"We are working in close cooperation with the city of New York to agree on a joint plan for the removal of the debris in the most expeditious and environmentally safe manner possible," she said.

While a restoration is planned for 130 Cedar, the fates of 130 Liberty and 90 West Street are still undecided; both would require extensive renovations before they could be reoccupied. A spokesman for the owner of 90 West, a 1907 Gothic landmark designed by Cass Gilbert, said the company was leaning toward saving the building.

"To date, based on all the information we have, it is structurally sound," said Thomas R. Mathes, an executive at Aegon USA Realty Advisors Inc., which controls the building.

Why do foreigners always have more rights than we do? Every buildling at the WTC can be entered by our firemen but the Deutsche Bank. And the reason the bank givea is soooo totally phony - a lawyer's reason.

I am Totally conviced that there is something incriminating at Deutsche Bank, but they'll probably pull a fast one and we'll never know.

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Has this bank been sitting empty since the attacks? This is simply idiotic that this building hadnt been searched yet. This is also the first I have heard of people being killed that were in adjacent buildings, although I have always had my suspicions(two people in elevator). The bones found in the bank were probably remaines of people that were in the planes that shot completely through the WTC and into the other building, that building should have been searched the very next day.

I have to wonder how they got the big flag and tarp up. Something does sound fishy here. I have seen with my own eyes that the gouge on the north face has been worked on, and if I weren't so lazy I would go find the photos.

Here are some maps of the addresses listed:

90 West Street

130 Cedar Street (They were already refurbishing this one pre-9/11)

130 Liberty Street (Deutche Bank - formerly Bankers Trust, I think)

Forgot to mention: there can be no remains from the airplane in Deutche Bank since it was shielded by the south tower. Anything foung at Deutche Bank is from the collapse of the south tower.

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