60 minutes rewind it all started in manhattan nearly two months ago at a place that would
be known forever as ground zero an act of terrorism and mass murder that ignited a war
that now has no end in sight we've learned about the people who died there the murderers who killed
there the heroes who still work there tonight for the first time we take you under ground zero
to a once vibrant underground city within a city that is now a 16-acre burial ground
a place where the effort to rebuild both physically and psychologically
faces extraordinary challenges seven weeks and a day after the attack on america's twin towers
there is still smoke in the air at ground zero they can't put out the subterranean fires
it will be several more months before all the debris here will be carted away
and then there will be an even more daunting and dangerous and time-consuming cleanup job
digging up and repairing what you can't see here the tunnels and garages and underground mall
beneath ground zero ken holden commissioner of new york's department of design and construction
is the city's point man in the cleanup effort he says debris from the tall towers crashed
through the roof of this building world trade center building six and threw the basements
six stories underground large chunks of that heavy uh facade broke off and presumably from floor
you know from the from the upper floors 90 or higher and just crash through the center of this
building crashing through the nine floors of this building and you'll see when we go underground
crashing through many of the uh the concrete slabs that create the parking structure the
debris some of the individual pieces weighing 30 tons cannonballed through building six creating an
open space that looks like an atrium it left much of the building unstable above ground and below
be really careful here it's a lot of these blocks are loose down below there
are cracks and fissures in the staircases and walls pretty regularly and everybody
here's a hell of a crack in this and there was worse to come it is still very dangerous down here
a war zone the deeper we descended the darker and drearier and dustier it became to get all those
concrete blocks above your head so please just kind of keep an eye try to stay off underneath
them we're only being held down by wires you could smell smoke and when the wind shifts in
certain pockets there is the uniquely unmistakable smell of death there was devastation everywhere
so much damage to the superstructure that quite frankly we were surprised to see anything
still standing and these are the huge columns the huge exterior columns that support the
exterior of the building and you can see the the force of the fire and the explosion is basically
sheared off and so that when you look at it from the outside you see that northern facade
is leaning against this building and that's why it's leaning because these have sheared off
when you see a building standing intact ken you don't think it's possible this
kind of thing can happen no no we're seeing very unusual circumstances throughout this building
we kept descending this is level b3 three floors beneath ground zero we walked into what used to
be a garage for the federal government employees who worked in the building the daylight you see
filters in from that giant crater at the bottom of what holden calls the atrium i call it the
atrium obviously it was not an atrium and you can you can see cars hanging off here
cars down here good god this is an automobile sure like this with its uh tires burnt off obviously
the rubber has been burnt off the fire here was so hot obviously these cars are all burnt out but
you'll be able to see over i believe it's over here i see the aluminum hubcap is just melted
right off that's a puddle of aluminum from the fire this is what's left of the hubcap
yep there's a car right down there careful there's a muffler and it's a car down there
this is really eerie because you realize it's not only a graveyard for automobiles
it's a great yard for some people tens of thousands of people used to come to these
underground tunnels every day not just to work in the towers and park their cars but
also to visit a vast underground shopping mall thousand people came here to shop every day
sure it was a city underneath the city a very very vibrant place a very vibrant place shops
were down here restaurants 15 to 25 000 people per building between people who actually work there
you have the uh what the one in the nine train going through the middle of the
complex you've got the the path trains i mean this is a huge this was a mini mini city below ground
all below ground we still had three stories to go to get down to the rail tunnels it was pitch black
disorienting and it was slippery the floor was slick with oil and gas from the abandoned cars
and we were warned the floor could collapse at any minute you see these cracks right
here right along here this is a cracked slab you can see see it goes all the way
under normal in a normal world this is not a place i would recommend taking anyone to
watch well that's the reason we want to keep moving here because this is unstable
the path commuter rail line is six stories below ground zero
miraculously perhaps no one died in this station the day the towers came down operating procedure
for the port authority and they and the ta is when there's a fire to evacuate so all these
both the path trains and the subways were evacuated when the buildings were on fire
so when they did collapse no one was injured i mean we lost a lot of people but we saved a lot
more than we that we lost 35 000 commuters used to arrive in this station from new jersey every day
but everything stopped just five minutes after tower one tumbled down six stories overhead
of all the things we've seen we've seen some incredible things today seeing this empty train
it's getting pretty airy it's pretty eerie and the sign that says next stop home i mean that's
really kind of poignant unfortunately there's nobody in the train absolutely
and this got evacuated this was all evacuated no one was hurt down here but it may take two
years before the trains will start rolling here again and even longer before a nearby subway line
will be fixed there are hundreds of miles of wires pipes and cables to be replaced by the end of next
year commissioner holden hopes to have his area above and below ground zero cleared up price tag
two and a half billion dollars ken estimated how much debris have you already removed
we've probably removed somewhere in the area of 400 000 tons the initial estimates that we worked
out with fema the federal emergency agency were somewhere in the area and with the port authority
we're somewhere in the area of 1.2 million tons so we're probably about a third of the way through
that's 1.2 million tons of steel and debris most of that from the surface almost all of
that from the surface we're just beginning to get below grade and to those who say i
appreciate their spirit but they must be kidding themselves it just can't be done you say what
we'll get it done we took one on the chin knocked us on our butt but like all new yorkers we'll
pick ourselves up we'll dust our clothes off and we'll get back to doing what we do best
but removing the debris that is underground is a logistical dilemma an engineering nightmare
when the world trade center complex was built 30 years ago an enormous retaining
wall called a slurry wall was constructed below ground the wall is three feet wide
and sixty to seventy feet deep it was designed to prevent water from the hudson river just blocks
away from flooding the six story basements here is your slurry wall this is probably an old tie back
the other side of this is the hudson river well the other side of this is is mud is but but the
water table here is extremely high because we're so close to the to the to the river that special
construction techniques were needed the massive underground containing structure is nicknamed
the bathroom what's the difference the bathtub in your house is designed to keep the water
in this keeps it out so that they can build the parking structures underground here for 30 years
now the wall has been supported by the floors in the basement levels floors that have now buckled
because of all the damage ken holden's engineers will have to shore up the wall with more than a
thousand cables to prevent it from collapsing you know we're drilling through the three foot
wall drill 85 feet or so down to bedrock then we drill 35 feet into bedrock then we take basically
the same kind of cables that they use on bridges grouted up basically concrete it up wait three
days for it to cure and then they tension those cables and and that that sustained the wall
something once something fell once the permanent are we all right we're fine
commissioner holden knows he can never let his guard down here and he has concerns about
the structural integrity of the wall when he starts demolition nearby as we talk right now
parts of the slurry wall have been damaged a little is there some water seeping through
or not much there is no more water seeping through the slurry wall now than there is in
in normal circumstances but it's a constant battle to keep it dry down here to keep the floods out
even when the wall is intact there are several inches of water in these tunnels but this water
is not seeping in from the river this comes from no fireman's water exactly saving the wall
is critical if the tunnels flood the water could pour into train and subway lines and destabilize
nearby buildings i don't know about you because the hair on the back of your neck beginning to
raise a little bit i've been down there too many times my my hairs are kind of worn away well maybe
you forgive some of the rest of us ken holden is under enormous pressure to get the job done
below ground and above but he knows he can't lose his sensitivity or perspective
this was probably about two weeks ago where a father firefighter was uh walking around
asking us to hold off on the road building operation uh basically pointed to a road to
his left he said you guys have already buried my best friend over here and i'm looking for
my son over here and he was pointing to the area where we're building another road i saw it at the
corner of my eye the father going climbing up to the debris pile with a spade and picking up fulls
of debris looking for a sun in that manner and then through the spade fills back and continued
to climb and look for spadefuls it was probably probably ranks as one of my more poignant moments
it's been seven weeks and a day firefighters and other rescue workers still search round
the clock at ground zero looking for the bodies of the thousands of people who have died here
they don't want to leave anyone behind do you consider it sacred ground or is it now moving to
a construction demolition and construction site in order for me to work here every day i
think i have to segue away from the sacred ground considerations and move towards a a a construction
site but i think you can't work here without being cognizant of the fact that there that there are
people here they're suffering here there's dead bodies here and uh and there's a need to treat
treat this ground in a manner different from you would than you would in any other construction
site since the attack at ground zero ken holden and his troops have been down in the rubble
almost every day it hasn't been easy but america is at war and commissioner holden
plans to win i think my attitude is probably the same attitude that most of the guys have
down here working on a day-to-day basis working on the pile 60 years ago when the when the nazis
were brought were bombing uh great britain and the british people were pulling out their
family and their friends and their neighbors from the rubble winston churchill said
we shall not fail we shall not falter
we shall not weary we shall not we shall not tire just give us the tools and we'll finish the job