Finding a hand or a mere bone fragment is considered a success at the former landfill where hundreds of workers are picking through the ruins of the World Trade Center.
Discovering anything that might identify one of the thousands of people still listed as missing can boost the morale of search crews, said Deputy Police Inspector James Luongo, who is in charge of the ghastly work.
PHOTO: AP
"You may not be able to help the dead, but you can help the living," he said.
Unlike the well-publicized recovery operation in Manhattan, the city's other ground zero is on a desolate, wind-swept plateau of household waste on Staten Island. Fresh Kills, one of the world's largest dumps before it closed last year, was reopened last month as arguably the world's largest crime lab. There are 800 people at work here, looking for human remains and potential clues.
The landfill has yielded a grim harvest of body parts and personal belongings. The work here is expected to take months.
At the feet of Linda Klepinger, a volunteer anthropologist from the University of Illinois, sits a bucket labeled "ANIMAL BONES." She uses a toothbrush to scrub the bone fragment found one recent day, deciding it might be part of wrist instead of a chicken bone from a restaurant meal.
"When you're working, you're OK," she said of her task. "It's later you have to worry."
As Detective Darryl Hayes put it: "If you're a human being, you're going to feel some emotion. But you suck it up and deal with it."
The search effort once relied solely on workers armed with rakes and pitchforks, crews that had to fight turf wars with seagulls. But over the past five weeks, an assembly line has emerged.
Barges deliver the debris -- 273,000 tonnes of it so far -- and huge dump trucks haul it to the 52-hectare search site. Cranes separate steel beams and other heavy wreckage: flattened fire trucks and police cruisers, an engine of one of the doomed jetliners, an elevator motor the size of a washing machine.
The rest ends up in mechanical sifters and conveyer belts, or spread on the ground so detectives and federal agents in protective gear can examine it.
The seagulls have been scared off by firecracker-firing guns. But the debris still brings with it the acrid smell familiar at ground zero.
The stench "sticks in your throat," said one detective, Tony Rivera. "It's hot out there. It smells. But you want to do the work."
One recent day, search crews found an ace of diamonds playing card, a doorknob, a pair of security guard pants, a woman's black wig and a pink toothbrush.
Personal effects are catalogued in hopes they can be returned to families of the victims. But investigators fear that many items, including flight recorders from the two jetliners, were destroyed.
The search crews wear mandatory jump suits, goggles, gas masks and earplugs, making the work feel like "something out of the X-Files," Hayes said.
He once discovered a severed hand. But most of the 2,000 body parts found to date are smaller and less obvious. There have been arm and leg bones, pieces of ribs and shoes. Lots of shoes.
Also found: driver's licenses, credit cards, wallets and, in one case, a box of wedding invitations, sealed, addressed and never sent.
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats