A Weary Faith

City struggles for optimism as rescue yields to recovery

By John Moreno Gonzales, Margaret Ramirez and Bobby Cuza | STAFF WRITERS

September 20, 2001

An exhausted worker waves his flag-adorned helmet and gas mask in St. PaulÂs Chapel.

An exhausted worker waves his flag-adorned helmet and gas mask to visitors in St. PaulÂs Chapel on Broadway yesterday. (Newsday Photo/ Audrey C. Tiernan)

While the city continued to take halting steps toward normalcy, French President Jacques Chirac became the first foreign head of state to tour Ground Zero yesterday as rescue workers failed to locate any survivors for a seventh consecutive day.

Chirac took an aerial tour of lower Manhattan with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and offered his unwavering support for the city and its residents.

"The mayor of New York must know that the French population and Paris, which has also been in the past attacked ... feels very, very close to the New York population and the New York authorities," said Chirac, a former mayor of Paris.

Despite the reassurance, it was another uneasy day for the city.

As office and other workers continued to return to lower Manhattan, many still stared in disbelief at the void left by the crumbling of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center last week.

Wall Street took another dip, with the market ending down 144 points after rallying from further depths. Federal agents detained three Yemeni men and searched the newsstand where they worked in Astoria yesterday evening. Police continued to press for those who would disrupt the already reeling city with bomb threats, charging a food service employee at Kennedy Airport in the third such incident this week. And residents of Battery Park City waited anxiously to return to their homes.

But nowhere, it seemed, was the continuing effect of the bombing felt more intensely than among the rescue workers, who combed through the wreckage with no success.

Late yesterday, after putting in another 12-hour day, ironworker Mike Ledson of Flatbush said he agonized about going home to his 8-year-old son.

"He keeps asking, 'Did you save anybody? Did you save anybody?'" Ledson said. "And unfortunately, I have to tell him no. It seems like you work all day and you turn around and it seems like you just cleared a little bit of the pile."

Just 170 bodies have been identified so far - barely 3 percent of the total dead and missing - and more searchers are wearing "Recovery" badges on their uniforms, indicating they're looking for bodies. Assistant Chief Terrance Manning of Los Angeles, a member of the California Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, said his and other units have searched about 75 percent of the catacombs and tunnels beneath the Trade Center.

Though armed with sophisticated listening devices that can detect noises as faint as a heartbeat, Manning said, his team has heard no tapping.

"Last night I got one hour's sleep," he said. "You lay down and you're awake an hour later."

Yesterday afternoon, Giuliani announced that a religious service tentatively slated for Central Park on Sunday had been relocated to Yankee Stadium. Plans to hold the larger-scale event were scrapped, due in part to concern about the availability of police.

"Given the enormous strain on the police, the National Guard, all the city and state people that are here, the idea of having a million people come, although very, very well-intentioned and quite beautiful ... would not be a good idea," Giuliani said.

Maintaining a degree of optimism, Giuliani also took pains to label the event a "prayer" rather than a "memorial" service.

"It was too early to have a memorial service," he said, "too early in the recovery and relief effort, and too early in the grieving process."

Earlier in the day, Giuliani had a private meeting with Chirac at the city's command center at Pier 92. During the meeting, Chirac asked Giuliani about hope for survivors.

"It's a very delicate thing to communicate correctly," the mayor said. "We are still proceeding like we might be able to find some people.... At the same time, we have to get people ready for the fact that with the length of time we are not going to be able to recover significant numbers."

Before taking Chirac on the aerial tour, Giuliani presented him with police and fire department caps in a makeshift office in the cavernous warehouse of Pier 92, where china has been brought in from Gracie Mansion to inject an element of home.

Chirac told reporters that the French press has taken to labeling Giuliani "Mayor Hero," an expression, he explained, that is akin to "Rudy the Rock."