Back in September, I wrote an article reflecting on the eight years since September 11, focusing on how there are still many lingering issues from the attack that must be addressed. Now, over six months since that piece was published, even more contentious issues surrounding the attack are surfacing.
One issue is that there are still ongoing efforts to identify 1,123 victims of the attacks. Although for the past few years, the government has not continued searching through debris, in the last month these efforts resumed at Freshkills Park in Staten Island. Freshkills is a 2,200-acre park and former landfill that in late 2001 became a dumping ground for much of the debris from the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan.
From 2001 until 2007, workers under the supervision of the medical examiner’s office searched through the rubble for the remains of victims in the form of objects, such as watches, credit cards and keys, which can be identified and given to the families of victims who have nothing else of their loved ones who died in the attack.
Most of these efforts took place during the ten-month period following the attack, when workers sifted through 1.2 million tons of material.
Up until 2007, the workers sifted through 15,000 yards of debris, which resulted in the finding of 1,172 objects that we deemed potential human remains. In 2007, the searches were ended after the FBI, NYPD, and Office of Emergency Management determined that all discernible remains had been excavated and brought to the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.
However, since 2007, 884 yards of dirt and debris have been excavated from the site of the attack, and efforts to search through these remains began this month. Much of this debris comes from the western edge of the World Trade Center site, where just last year, a previously unknown catch basin of remains was discovered under the street. Now, workers are sifting through this in an effort to find any traces of 1,123 victims whose remains were never found. Officials in New York expect the search process to take six months.
According to the New York Times, many families believe that the process has taken far too long and that the city has failed to go through the rubble properly. Many others believe that now, over eight years after the attacks, that the searches are not necessary, despite the fact that thousands of families still have little or no remains of their family members who died on the day of the attack.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg explained by importance of the search efforts when he said, “There is soil that in theory could — nobody knows whether it does or not — contain remains from the terrible tragedy that occurred on 9/11.”
He continued, “We are not going to walk away from our obligation to do anything that is reasonable and practical and affordable to recover and identify any remains that might be there.”
