Anguished Labors Continue

By Graham Rayman and Dan Janison | STAFF WRITERS

September 17, 2001

The grim and exhausting task of looking for survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Center continued yesterday.

But in the back of the workers' minds is that at some point, because of the sheer volume of material and passage of time, the rescue operation will end.

"The consensus is that this is a Herculean effort, and it's just going to get to the point where you have to start bringing in the cranes and moving the stuff," said a police official, who asked that his name not be used.

In front of the American Express building yesterday, four bodies were unearthed in roughly the same area. The bodies were placed in bags and transported.

"All we're finding is bodies and pieces of bodies," a police officer said.

Around the site, there are numbers spray-painted on debris, police officers said: A "3" here, a "4" there, a "2" there, or a "1." The numbers refer to how many bodies were in a particular spot.

They are marked and left because - due to the weight of the debris or its instability - they are impossible to reach until construction machines perform more clearing.

In one macabre scene, the body of a woman was found in a building, but her body was so badly damaged she could not easily be moved. Officers took DNA samples on the spot.

As rescue workers crawl over the mounds and move debris in long bucket lines, firefighters and search teams peer into crevices or use ropes to rappel into holes looking for bodies.

It is unclear to those working on the debris how much the collapse damaged the ground below the towers.

"There was a tunnel down to the parking garage that's buried," the officer said. "You can't tell that it's there."

It's dangerous work. At one point, the officer said, several rescue workers were nearly hit by debris that tumbled off a crane.

But the overall efficiency of the operation appears to be improving as the days pass.

Cathy Dawkins, a spokeswoman for the Department of Sanitation, said that for the 24-hour period ending today, the department assigned 840 Sanitation workers. The workers used 237 pieces of equipment.

The wreckage removed to the Staten Island landfill as of yesterday amounted to at least 32,150 tons.

"That rubble continues to be treated as evidence," Dawkins said. "The FBI is sifting through it, load by load."

Meanwhile, in the rest of the boroughs and in Manhattan north of Canal Street, the department is resuming garbage collection today.

In addition, alternate side parking restrictions will be in effect and street sweeping will be done in all boroughs but Manhattan.

The Toll

5,000 Estimated deaths nationally