Ground Zero: Bloomberg Thumbs His Nose at NY GOP Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit "Ground Zero" Operation Winds Down [Wherein we learn that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, lately of the Democratic wing of the Unity Party, who spent billions to buy the nomination and election in the Republican wing, has now thumbed his nose at the GOP and scheduled the Final Day at Ground Zero for May 30, conflicting with a Republican convention. The workers, many of whom have not strayed far from the site for nine months, but about to be separated from the site and their colleagues, will now be facing perhaps their toughest psychological challenge. The CDC plans to follow them all in a long-term health-effects study of the after-effects of months of exposure to burned body bits, PVC, asbestos, fiberglass, polyurethane, benzene, formaldehyde and lord knows what else. We hope they've budgeted plenty for psychological follow-up as well. These walking wounded are about to cut adrift from the tasks they are heavily invested in, and the colleagues who have become their major support system. They will need all the help they can get. Meanwhile we -- half a mile north of Ground Zero -- hope the hole in the ground will soon cease to be a magnet for out-of-town tourists, cops, street flag vendors, and the cheap, undignified circus atmosphere that has taken over the oldest and most historically rich part of Manhattan. We'd like them to clean up poor St. Paul's Church, a beautiful brownstone landmark which now looks like the former site of a honky-tonk carnival that just pulled up stakes and left all its tawdry red-white-and-blue garbage behind. We breathed in the smoke and the pollution for months. Now we want to free our city of the stench of phoney patriotism. -- NY Transfer] The Observer - May 19, 2002 http://www.observer.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,718228,00.html With the last hillock of the mangled steel set to be removed from Ground Zero next week, New Yorkers are preparing to move on from the disaster that has dominated their lives for nearly nine months by Edward Helmore With the last hillock of the mangled steel set to be removed from Ground Zero next week, New Yorkers are preparing to move on from the disaster that has dominated their lives for nearly nine months. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced that a closing ceremony will take place on 30 May during which the last steel column and an empty flag-draped stretcher symbolising people not recovered would be carried from the site. But the timing of the ceremony has angered victims' relatives and rescue workers because they were not consulted on the date, which falls on a weekday and at the same time as a Republican Party convention in the city. 'You can't pick a day where everybody is going to be happy,' Bloomberg said. 'I made the decision and that's when we are going to have it.' Over the past month, the city-within-a-city at the tip of Manhattan has been winding down. The debris known as The Pile that was once the remains of the World Trade Centre is a neat hole. A few months ago, hundreds worked here round the clock. Almost every day, workers would halt as the remains of a firefighter or a police officer were carried from the wreckage. Dozens of bulldozers worked night and day. Now that urgency has departed, leaving Ground Zero a sadder, quieter place. Last week the Salvation Army tent where rescue workers ate, slept and consoled one another was almost empty. More than 107,000 truckloads of debris have been taken from here - 1.8 million tons in all - in an operation that has exceeded expectations in terms of the time and cost. For many who have worked here, the end of the operation is a bitter-sweet moment. 'It's the way it should be,' said firefighter Mickey Kross. 'Two months from now they'll start rebuilding.' But without Ground Zero as a focal point, many say they do not know what to move on to. 'It's time to move on but it's going to be hard to leave this place behind,' said Charlotte Leopard, who lost her fiancé, a firefighter, in the attack and has been volunteering four days a week. 'Everyone down here has been so focused that they haven't had time to grieve. It's safe here. Through this tremendous loss, we have become very united, almost like a family. 'The further away you get from the site it's like it never happened. It saddens me that everyone seems to have forgotten about it after only eight months.' If anything, the end of the recovery makes their loss more painful. One of the most poignant symbols of the loss has been the retired firefighters who lost sons in the collapse and who have been at the site since September hoping for word they had been found. 'It's empty and hopeless and that reverberates around the whole site,' said Leopard. 'Everyone is affected by the sadness. This is the end. Where are all those people?' Every inch has been carefully checked for human remains, once here and twice more at the Staten Island landfill where the remains of the World Trade Centre have been taken. The acidic smell of destruction has mostly departed from the site. On the last hillock a torn blue sweatshirt still carries traces of the telltale odour of decomposition. But any find, unless it contains bone marrow, is now useless to pathologists because the DNA is too degraded by time to make a match. Using DNA samples to identify remains has been far less useful than anticipated after the disaster when relatives were urged to supply items such as hairbrushes that might contain correlating samples. Only 300 people have been identified using DNA samples from the 19,500 body parts recovered, and only 1,050 of 2,800 who died have been identified at all. In the early days of the recovery many of the DNA samples that were recovered proved useless because they were contaminated by other samples from unsterilised equipment. Most positive identifications that have been made came from dental records. As one Fire Department chief, surveying the last hillock of debris last Thursday, noted: 'I'll have mixed feelings when it's done. I'm sad we didn't find more people.' ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytnyc-05.19.02-19:02:35-28254