Posted on 09/28/2001 9:58:03 AM PDT by dead
Over the edge of hope ... an image of the
World Trade Centre rubble last week.
Photo: AFP
Once there was faint hope amid the ruins of the World Trade Centre. Now, writes Mark Riley, there is only endless, sickening, dangerous work.
The landscape of death has no colour. When life is removed, there are only shades of grey.
It has shape and form, yet no consistency or pattern. It is a tangled pile of metal, a jagged mass of concrete, a heap of pulverised bricks. It is shattered chairs and broken desks, pieces of aeroplane and crushed cars.
Everywhere and everything is blanketed in dust. Bleak, toneless, grey sheets of dust.
It could be dismissed as simply abstract if it were not for the dark truth that everyone finds so difficult to speak. Somewhere in between are the remains of several thousand people, hidden as if consumed by this wretched panorama, painted by hate.
At a landfill site on Staten Island, over a bridge, through a tunnel and 15 kilometres from Manhattan, an army of men and women in white overalls, face masks and white hard hats sifts through these fields of deathly debris with common garden rakes, unsure of exactly what they are expected to find.
This is the last stop for the tonnes of broken buildings and shattered lives that are being carted away each day by truck and barge from the ruins of the World Trade Centre.
The name of the site, by a cruel twist of fate, is Fresh Kills Land Fill. It had been closed some months before the terrorist attacks. The land had been filled and the local residents had had enough of their community being used as a dumping ground for Manhattan's filth. Yet no-one complained when it was brought back into service for this most gruesome of tasks.
About 300 police officers, fire-fighters and volunteers scratch their rakes through the debris in search of body parts, jewellery, ID cards, anything that will help check another name off the list of 5,960 people recorded as missing in the September 11 attacks.
A police sergeant says he is amazed they are finding wallets intact. All the credit cards, the cash, little notes and receipts are all there. But there is nothing of the person - many seemingly atomised by the force of the buildings' collapse.
Seagulls hover overhead, scavenging for food. The dust rises as the workers shuffle through, their faces contorting to the sickening stench rising from the ground.
It has to be one of the worst jobs imaginable. It is enough to bring hard men to tears. And it does. Every day.
A refrigerated truck is parked to one side. It is from the New York City Coroner's Office.
Inside are body bags containing human remains sifted from the rubble. Everything will be sent to laboratories across the country for DNA testing and cross-matching with samples supplied by the families of the missing.
The "units" sent from here will range from coin-size pieces of flesh to the entire torso that was found last week among a pile of concrete and metal delivered on a truck driven by 35-year-old Dennis Gartland.
He told the New York Times that the discovery had thrown him off centre. In all his years as a truck driver, he never imagined that one day his rig would be converted into a hearse.
"It just really freaked me out," Gartland said. "I got friends who died in there, you know? Firemen. That could have been my friend. This whole thing's got me beat down."
Yet, the whole thing has really only just begun.
What has reached the Fresh Kills site so far represents barely one-10th of the 1.2 million tonnes of steel and concrete pieces that were once the offices, shops, restaurants and bars, the places of work and places of pleasure that brought life to the 110-storey twin towers of the World Trade Centre.
The 410-metre towers collapsed with such power that they were reduced to mere mounds of rubble just 20 metres high. To get some idea of the enormity of the destruction, one need only imagine that the wreckage of the two full-size passenger jets that slammed into the buildings is so insignificant as to be lost amid the ruins.
Groups of relatives of the missing have been ushered through the site for the first time this week. A small memorial was erected near what was tower one. Many relatives clutched flowers and teddy bears, which they laid next to the rubble. New York City's mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, escorted the first group and promised them he would ensure a tasteful and permanent memorial was established at the site. He also promised to send each one a reminder from the World Trade Centre, possibly a jar of soil, though not all thought that would be appropriate. It would conjure memories of those frightening scenes now imprinted in the world's memory of the buildings coming down, of lives and histories and families' loves being reduced to dust.
The "frozen zone" around the site has been increasingly condensed over the past week.
The thousands of tourists and curious New Yorkers who are drawn to the area each day can now view the destruction from within a couple of blocks of "ground zero".
But the entire site remains a designated crime zone and no photos are allowed. Police threaten to confiscate the cameras of the many onlookers who try to surreptitiously bang off a shot.
"If you want to smile and say 'Cheese', you've got to go down the end of the block," a policeman yelled sarcastically at one eager tourist.
The atmosphere inside the site itself has changed appreciably in the past week. Gone is the adrenaline-fuelled pandemonium of the first few days, when rescuers searched frantically for survivors while engineers and construction workers braced nearby buildings against the threat of further collapse.
It has now taken on the appearance of a huge demolition site. There is order where once there was chaos. The rescue effort has become a recovery effort. The work has become a job.
The hope of finding anyone alive now is remote. Everyone at the site knows that the last person rescued was a woman trapped under a collapsed pedestrian bridge across the road from where the towers had stood. That was 17 days ago - the day after the attacks.
The adrenaline has been replaced by bone-weariness, as crews of firefighters, police, construction workers, steel workers and volunteers put in 12-hour shifts on a demolition and removal operation that is costing $US100 million ($202 million) a week.
The recovery effort is being co-ordinated with military precision. A schoolhouse near the site has become a strategic headquarters, where the chiefs of several city government departments and representatives of the construction and demolition crews meet each morning to plan the day's objectives.
About 1,000 workers file into the site in two shifts and are designated to four separate quadrants, manning excavators and cranes, or just shovels and buckets. They carefully clear areas that have been checked and rechecked by rescuers, and often cadaver-sniffing dogs, and fill the trucks and the barges destined for the grey wasteland of the Fresh Kills dump.
Others sift through new areas, exposed by the cranes as they peel away the layers of bent metal. Anything that looks like evidence goes into one of hundreds of large bins for examination by on-site investigators. Body parts go another way, into bags and another refrigerated truck.
Several fires are still burning in sections of the ruins. Most are in the seven subterranean levels that housed arcades of shops, car parks and subway stations.
The basement levels are encased by a large underground wall that was designed to keep the nearby Hudson River at bay. The integrity of that rectangular retaining wall, known as "the bathtub", is in serious question after the collapse of the floors and beams that once held it in place.
Engineers say the only thing buttressing the wall now in several areas is the mass of compressed rubble that was jammed down by the incredible force of the imploding buildings.
How to remove that rubble without compromising the wall and sending a flood of river water gushing through these urban catacombs is one of the many tactical nightmares faced by the co-ordinating team.
"If there are any large breaks in the wall, it will be terrible," said Herb Rothman, an engineer working on what is called the Below Concourse Task Force. "We're talking flooding subway tunnels, destabilising foundations and possible slides."
Up above the perilous bathtub, 20 excavators and cranes gnaw away at the mountains of twisted beams. Demolition consultants keep a watchful eye to ensure the removal of the girders does not disturb the nearby wreckage and set off a chain reaction that would imperil those tunnelling for pockets that could conceivably harbour life.
"It's real slow," engineer Wayne Fallon said. "Whenever we find a body part, we've got to stop and investigate further."
A whistle sounds around the site when such a discovery is made. All work ceases while rescue workers move in. They usually emerge within half an hour. They carry the body out wrapped in the Stars and Stripes. Everyone salutes. Another name is marked off the list.
Miserable.
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