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New Yorkers, tourists converge on trade center ruins

Twelve days after a terrorist attack toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center, leaving almost 6,600 dead or missing, hundreds of New Yorkers and camera-strung American and foreign tourists converge on the ruins.

They emerge in throngs from nearby City Hall subway station and stroll, guidebooks and bottles of water in hand, towards Ground Zero, the mountain of rubble that was once the glittering crown of the lower Manhattan skyline.

At the intersection of Ann Street and Park Row, where you get your first glimpse of the wreck, they stand on tiptoe, swaying as they seek out the best angle for a photo.

A burned-out building is framed by a church and a truck, but it is too distant for a clear shot, and this is no place to hang around.

The police tells the tourists to move on, "for security reasons," and the crowd contracts and heads in the direction of Nassau Street.

National guardsmen, sent into the city after the Sept. 11 attack, act as tourist guides.

"Four or five blocks that way, turn to the right," one replies in a friendly tone to a foreigner asking for the best place to see the 6-hectare site of Ground Zero.

You get your first real shock at Fulton Street, only a few dozen meters from where one of the seven buildings that made up the "Trade" leans, blacked but still upright.

"It's block five," a woman said. "There's still lots of dust," noted the person next to her, pointing out neighboring buildings thick with soot.

A group of French New Yorkers stand astounded at the sight. One of them, a financial analyst, Olivier Philippart, pointed to the gap in the cityscape where the 110-storey twin towers stood.

"It's incredible. I used to go to The World of Golf shop," he said. "Right next door was Century 21 where you could buy clothes. I went past the Trade every morning. I used to take the Path Train underneath the Center to go to New Jersey. There are probably people still down there," he added.

Street traders sell US flags for US$5 each. An old man cycles back and forth, a cassette-player strapped to his bike, playing the national anthem.

Two blocks further on, in Liberty Street or Maiden Lane, the full horror of the catastrophe hits you. A bit of wall sticks up amid the tonnes of debris, an unbelievable mass of twisted steel and concrete. The star-spangled banner hangs from the arm of a giant crane.

Suddenly, the visitors no longer look like tourists. Their gaze fills with sadness. A woman seizes her friend by the arm.

Another tells a stranger: "My husband was here, he was downstairs." A man tells his daughter: "Look at it. This is war," Some climb onto benches to take photos, but no-one jostles for a place.

Gale Rivera, a 45-year-old nurse from Brooklyn, said she had brought her son and grandson, each aged six, to the site.

"I want to see reality and I want the kids to understand what's going on," she said. "They wanted to come to see if people are really dead or alive. Now they have the concept."

Nearby, Lee Brooks of Boston, said she and her family had combined a weekend visit to New York to see the Broadway musical The Producers with a tour of the ruins.

"I wanted to see what was left," she said. "I cannot imagine all those people inside ... thousands ... all those innocent people ... I am so sad."

Many others stand in silence, their gaze fixed on the wrecked buildings which surround the plaza.

Everyone tries to imagine the moment of impact as two hijacked airliners struck the twin towers, the hellish climb downstairs, the firefighters climbing to their deaths and the collapse of the towers.

Like the others, the Brooks family stays for a very long moment. They leave, stop, turn back, stare once again and turn. It is time to go.
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