In case anyone was interested in going as I was:
September 19, 2001
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
Memorial Service Set in Central Park Delayed
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Shovels at the ready at Fresh Kills landfill, for the labor of sifting through the World Trade Center rubble. The flag was recovered from the debris.
The memorial service planned for this Sunday in Central Park, which city officials had said could draw one million people, has been called off, in part because of concerns that a city now far more conscious of its vulnerability could not guarantee the safety of such an event.
Sunny Mindel, press secretary for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, said yesterday that the event had been postponed, not canceled, and insisted that logistical problems presented more difficulties than security issues. "We started to receive calls from people all over the United States, and it started to become clear it was going to draw absolutely enormous crowds," Ms. Mindel said. "Among the resources that would have to be deployed is N.Y.P.D., fire, and that means pulling them off other things."
Law enforcement officials said an important reason for putting off the event was that it would be virtually impossible to ensure that such a large crowd would be safe in a park that covers 840 acres and is easily entered at almost any point. They also said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had recommended against holding the service.
City officials said the Giuliani administration was considering holding smaller events in each borough, rather than the single one the mayor had proposed, in remembrance of the more than 5,000 people feared killed in last week's attack on the World Trade Center. Mr. Giuliani had asked religious leaders and two former mayors, David N. Dinkins and Edward I. Koch, to organize the event, and announced soon after the disaster that it would be held Sept. 23 in Central Park.
Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington will meet with the organizers today in City Hall to discuss alternative plans.
RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
The 'Gruesome Work'
On 130 barren and dusty acres of the now closed Fresh Kills landfill, investigators have set up an elaborate process to sift through the rubble and twisted steel from the collapsed buildings.
In every sense, the job is enormous. Forty-five thousand tons have already been sorted in 12-hour shifts by hundreds of investigators led by New York detectives who scrape through the debris with rakes and sometimes their hands. A million more tons are on the way. So far the crews, who wear respirators and white jumpsuits, have found 256 body parts, a .40-caliber gun, box cutters and assorted wallets and other items that might help identify some of the victims.
"It's gruesome work," said Sgt. Ray Sheehan of the crime scene unit.
Each piece of evidence is photographed, cataloged and sent to the F.B.I. lab. Body parts are tagged and put in a refrigerator truck for shipment to the medical examiner's office. Personal property is set aside for return to families.
The prize find, however, has not turned up: any of the black boxes from the airplanes. There are months of sifting left, though, and investigators have set up a small village of tents under a tattered American flag recovered in the debris.
"Remember from your catechism?" asked Deputy Inspector James Luongo. "This is a corporal work of mercy."
KEVIN FLYNN
Why Was He Spared?
In a hospital bed on Long Island, Firefighter Kevin Shea is waiting to hear from the man who can restore his memory.
Mr. Shea's overnight shift at Engine Company 40 on the Upper West Side had just ended when the call came for fire trucks citywide to rush to the crash site. He joined three other men on an engine that hurtled down the West Side Highway. The first thing he saw was a car engulfed in flames, and the first thing he did was grab an extinguisher meant to douse fuel fires.
He remembers nothing more.
"I was getting ready to go in, and then I woke up in the hospital," Mr. Shea said yesterday at St. Charles Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Port Jefferson, N.Y., where he is recovering from a broken neck vertebra and a head wound. At first, he was taken by ferry to Jersey City, where he told doctors things that are now beyond his grasp: how he crawled through yards and yards of rubble after the first tower collapsed, screaming into his radio for help and hoping aloud that his family knew he loved them.
A friend in Company 40 learned in the days that followed that a fire captain found Mr. Shea just before the second tower collapsed and carried him to safety. Mr. Shea is fixated on finding that captain, hoping he can provide details to ease a worry that grows worse by the hour. His firehouse, at West 66th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, is missing 11 men, including the 3 with whom Mr. Shea rode to the scene.
"Why wasn't I stuck in there with the other guys?" he said. "What happened? Knowing that I was performing some function, something purposeful, maybe that will bring a little bit of relief."
ABBY GOODNOUGH
Touring an Injured City
The red double-decker bus pulled into Midtown traffic along Eighth Avenue yesterday with Sigmund Cowan bellowing over a loudspeaker, instructing everyone to remain seated during the tour. Everyone, then, numbered just four: two couples, one English, the other German, all in New York City for the first time.
The gigantic Gray Line bus lumbered into Times Square, stopped for a dozen more passengers, and wound its way to the Empire State Building. "Oops, folks, it's closed," Mr. Cowan announced as the bus approached. "It's normally open till 11 p.m., but we're not under normal circumstances."
The bus went on and no one complained, though everybody aboard was keenly aware that they were tourists in a city still mourning last week's terrorist attack. A few reluctantly snapped a photograph.
Gray Line began operating an abbreviated tour of downtown Saturday, but since fear is keeping so many tourists out of the city, the company is losing money with each bus it sends out, said Mike Alvich, the company's vice president of sales.
At Grand Street, the bus broke from the mapped route and headed back uptown. Everyone could see smoke rising farther south, but Mr. Cowan did not point it out and no one asked any questions.
JACOB H. FRIES
Pressed Back Into Service
For decades, the remains of firefighters who died in the line of duty were carried to funerals on a fire engine that had been dedicated to that solemn purpose and no other. But the caisson, as the Fire Department calls the equipment, was not used at the burials last weekend of Chief Peter Ganci, First Deputy Commissioner William Feehan, or Chaplain Mychael Judge. Nor was it to be used at the four funerals for firefighters today.
The attack on the World Trade Center destroyed 48 pieces of fire equipment, leaving the city with virtually no surplus equipment. The caisson has been returned to fire service as an engine. |
