NYC to resume search for remains of 9/11 victims
Local officials say truckloads of debris recovered from World Trade Center will be sifted for remains for about 10 weeks; initiative met with mixed response from families
New York City is resuming the search for remains of the victims of the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center, ABC News reported Monday.
ABC News quoted local officials as saying that truckloads of debris recovered from the site will be sifted for remains for about 10 weeks.
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The city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) advised families of the dead about the new sifting operation, the first since 2010, the report said.
The news, the report said, was met with a mixed response.
Sally Regenhard, who lost her son Christian, a New York firefighter, said she did not trust the OCME would do a good job in finding the remains.
"I personally, and the people in my organization, would rather wait until we are guaranteed that there is a quality of excellence and that we will have the procedures done in the correct way," Regenhard was quoted by ABC News as saying.
But Charles Wolf, who lost his wife Katherine in the attack, supports the city's decision to continue the search for remains and said officials have been very supportive of the families of the victims.
9/11 memorial ceremony (Archive photo: AFP)
"They have pushed the envelope, they have developed new technologies for DNA testing. They have done everything they could. They've been wonderful friends to the families," Wolf said.
According to ABC News, the medical examiner's office has identified remains of 1,634 people out of 2,752 killed when suicide hijackers crashed two planes into the twin towers, leaving more than 1,000 families without any physical remains of those who died.
After the initial cleanup of the site, the city scaled back the search for remains, ABC News said, drawing criticism from families of the victims, who said they could not properly grieve.
The city widened its search again in 2006.
According to Monday's report, the next search will comb through 451 cubic meters of excavated material taken from and near the World Trade Center site.
Much of the site, known as Ground Zero, is a construction zone for new skyscrapers and a memorial where the twin towers once stood, ABC News said in its report.
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