The Long, Grim Job Of Sorting Bodies Begins

New York Daily News ^ | 9/13/01 | WILLIAM SHERMAN

[kattracks]

It was a caravan that no New Yorker ever wants to see.

Convoys of refrigerator trucks began transporting the bodies and body parts extracted from the twisted rubble and debris around the World Trade Center yesterday.

A line of six 16-wheelers was parked on Vesey St. and shortly after noon, emergency workers began loading body bags, one by one, into a truck backed up to the atrium of the World Financial Center. They labored in the smoke and ashes that still swirled through the area.

Five other trucks and drivers were lined up, waiting their turn.

At 4:56 p.m., the first truck pulled out, with a police motorcycle escort, heading slowly north. There were no sirens, just the flashing lights on the motorcycles. A few minutes later, workers started loading the second truck. The grisly process, Mayor Giuliani somberly said, "will take some time."

Uptown, on Second Ave., another convoy of 26 refrigerated trucks, donated by United Parcel Service, stretched from 30th to 33rd Sts. It was just blocks from the city morgue.

So far, the Manhattan morgue is the only spot where the bodies are being taken, according to Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office. "We've been getting bodies, I can't give you the numbers. They're coming in all the time," she said.

Downtown and uptown, authorities made sure the grim transportation of the bodies was not closely watched. They kept reporters and photographers around the corner from the mortuary entrance to the medical examiner's office, on 30th St. between First Ave. and FDR Drive.

Emergency workers said that because most of the bodies were burned, crushed or dismembered beyond recognition, the task of preparing victims for eventual burial could take weeks. Relatives will have to supply information that would help with identification.

Giuliani has said that the medical examiner's office is equipped to handle the volume of fatalities, both in its Manhattan and Bronx offices.

A pier on the Hudson River could be used as an additional morgue if necessary, he said.

Three federal Disaster Mortuary Organized Response Teams landed at McGuire Air Force Base in southern New Jersey Tuesday night, to help with the grim business of organizing and identifying bodies.