New York Post article on WTC remains, Oct 2006

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Ground Zero Forensic Team to Seek Remains Is PostedIdetjJ ) DIP By DAVID W. DUNLAP or not two years from now or during New York City’s chief medical ex­ construction somebody finds some­ aminer will station a team at ground thing else, you just don’t know,” he zero to look for human remains from said 9/11, the Bloomberg administration Despite an impression four years sajd yesterday, after dozens of bones ago that the recovery effort had been wye found Thursday by workers ex- completed, human remains continue ci^ting two manholes that had been to be found around ground zero. In ctWered since 2002. the last year, 760 b^y parts were iThis was an enormous disaster,” discovered at the former Deutsche »0yor Michael R. Bloomberg said Bank building. Victims' relatives be­ otrtis WABC radio program. “It’s an lieve that many more remains await eigiTmous area. And 1 think those recovery at the Fresh Kills landfill th^ did the recovery effort, yew on Staten Island. they did the best they could. Hie discovery this week reopened Yiu can’t be perfect, unfortunately, wwi something’s this trig.” P>e excavation began Wednesday uAct a service road paralleling Dosxns of bones are wist Street. Workers tor Phoenix QMttnictors are preparing this uncovered in service area, south of Vesey Street and with- mxhe World Trade Center site, for a road manholes. p^ageway to link the future trade cefUer below ground to Battery Park City. On Thursday morning, they a scar that never healed for the f^d as many as 80 bones and bone many relatives of victims who all but figments and personal effects like vanished on Sept 11, 2001. To date, wallets and watches. the medical examiner’s office has pfficials expect more remains to identified no physical trace of 1,151 of emerge from four other manholes the 2,749 people who died in the at­ a(^ utility service boxes that have tack. b^n covered since the service road Yesterday, family members called was built four years ago. They also on local officials to step aside and expect to find smaller remains in permit a thorough new search for hu­ material that was vacuumed out of man remains, governed by strict the .manholes by Consolidated Edi­ protocols, on the trade center site sto crews on Wednesday. and its environs. After a 90-minute meeting yester- “If they were capable of doing the ddy wlth utility executives and other job, we wouldn’t be finding these hu­ officials, Deputy Mayor Edward Sky- man remains now,” said Sally ler- said that Con Ed and Verizon Regenhard of the Skyscraper Safety crews would continue to remove ma­ Campaign. She has yet to recover the terial from underground areas near remains of her son, Christian, a pro- West Street bationary firefighter, who was killed /‘The city’s medical examiner will on 9/11. be on site to carefully sift through The family members demanded a any material recover^ to Identify halt to all construction at the trade any human remains,” Mr. Skyler center site and the interventi<xi of said. “Hie medical examiner’s foren- the federal government through the SIC anthropologists wiU work cio.sely—Joint P.O.W.-M.l.A. Accounting Com- with police and fire personnel, who mand,- which recovers and identifies witl'be (Ml scene at all times.” service members who have been ) Mr, Skyler said the city’s Depart- killed in action and operates what it ment of Design and Construction and describes as the world’s largest fo­ the Lower Manhattan Construction rensic anthropology laboratory. Command Center would identify oth­ None of these concessions were er underground areas, if any, that forthcoming from City Hall, leading need to be searched by the same Glenn P. Corbett, a technical adviser method. to the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, Mayor Bloomberg said such dis- to call the mayor’s response “totally CQweries might continue. “Whettier inadequate.”

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