The debris was being moved at a rate of about 2,3000m3 a day. How long it would take to clear the estimated 1.5m3 covering 6.5 hectares of lower Manhattan is unknown.
To Tom Rowe, a New Jersey firefighter working as a volunteer, the material collected by the bucket brigades seemed insignificant. "It's like if you filled your back yard with sand, and you tried to empty it with a teaspoon."
All across the country, people in the building industry have watched the World Trade Center operation with eyes that see more than just the television pictures of workers dwarfed by their project.
"I would say it takes a task and multiplies it by 100 times in terms of the level of care," said Bill Walsh, operations manager for Engineered Demolition.
"It's unusual," said Jay Lubow, a New York architect. "People seem to think you can just start picking up the rubble. But because it fell randomly, it's like `pick up sticks' -- you move a stick on top, it moves sticks on the bottom."
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