60 minutes rewind
while the rest of the country has gone on with its life ground zero the world trade
center site has been in a sense frozen in time september 11th never ended there it has endured
in the recovery work every day and every night non-stop now after 233 days it is almost over
in terms of concrete and steel what you're about to see is something close to a miracle
but in terms of flesh and blood there's a limit to what can be done it's likely most of those
lost will never be found lower manhattan hasn't looked like this since 1968 now that the clock is
about to start moving again here is a reckoning of what was found what was lost and what comes next
after september 11th the world trade center was a mountain of misery one million 500 thousand
tons of wreckage and nearly three thousand people to be found inside it started moving
hand over hand one bucket at a time and it has not stopped for a single hour since that day
now almost eight months later it is nearly done at the base of downtown's towers all that remains
is a wound that covers 16 acres and cuts 70 feet deep a hole in the heart of manhattan
this was the scene today these men and women are working in the pit the seven-story trade center
basement they're down to the bedrock of the island front loaders are shaking out for inspection what
is among the last of the ruins when you're down in the pit digging what have you seen
i've seen many organizations working hard together getting along i've seen the look on people's face
like they still can't believe it even though it's months later dan henry a port authority
cop is helping to recover the human remains when we do have a recovery i don't i don't think of it
as a bad thing i think of it as the beginning of closure for families that have been through
just pure hell today it's hard to picture the seven buildings that were lost
seven world trade center was 47 floors building six had eight floors buildings five and four were
nine floors each the towers one and two were 110 floors each and number three was a 22 floor hotel
piece by piece those buildings have sailed on barges across the hudson to a landfill on staten
island here the ruins are separated sorted and searched again tons of concrete roll by before
there's even a hint of a life a frequent flyer card or the keys to the office they've manned
these lines every day weekends holidays every day and after eight months of that for many
there's a sense of loss at leaving when it's all over it's gonna be hard
it's gonna be hard to say goodbye to this but we will and though this operation will end
the friendships and the bonds that were formed never well jim luongo and bruce bovino of the nypd
and the fbi's richard marx run the operation give me some sense of what you've found over the
last seven months or so it's life interrupted it's just bits and pieces of people's lives
you see all the cars that we've brought up here as you go through and try to get the personal effects
out of the cars you find golf clubs you find birthday presents you find kids toys in the car
it's just a snapshot of these people's lives that abruptly came to an end the most overwhelming was
the wedding invitations that sort of struck home of course in that field of debris and
mess out there with these pure white wedding invitations still with little doilies on them
there have been a lot of other things things like wrist watches rings about 500 600 pieces
of jewelry and it's amazing an entire building you saw before destroyed crushed
and how a diamond engagement ring or wedding ring survives i just feel it's just meant to be found
and while we were there they were meant to find another a ladies ring
which they will try to match to a family there's no rhyme or reason here gold survives and
steel doesn't the cops sorting through the cars say this wheel and engine are all that's left
of a u.s secret service armored limousine kept at the world trade center for visiting heads of state
a few of the most remarkable things they found are hidden away in a storage container richard marks
took us inside these are items from the airplane pieces mechanical parts that we've recovered looks
like a landing gear strut we have a landing gear strut on the side and part of an engine back there
uh this one i believe is from flight 11 which crashed into north tower how do you know that
by the serial numbers on the engines and next to boeing lies balzac the bust of the french novelist
sculpted by rodin these were rodin statues from the 105th floor would have been in the
main lobby of cantor fitzgerald this part of the sculpture is one of the three shades of door in
the top of the gates of hell by rodin which is a huge broad structure the gates of hell
the landfill is a field of lost souls 135 victims have been identified here that were not found at
the world trade center site families are calling nearly every day what on earth do you tell them
when they call and say deputy inspector are you going to find my wife my son my dad
i tell him that we're going to try our hardest to do such and we won't stop until we finish a
woman called you you'd found her husband's id in all of this but she was mad at you because you
didn't find his body the reality is not everybody is going to be found that's the very hard horrible
reality michael was michael he was single-minded he was wonderful firefighter mike ragusa
responded to the world trade center his father vincent and mother dee have not had news since
and after all this time they're not sure they want to because if he's identified at this point it
will be through dna and instead of wondering what happened to him i will know as for a fact that he
was blown to bits and as a mother that's very hurtful the raguzas are one of the few families
who refuse to have a memorial until the last hope of identifying their son is gone for them there is
comfort in not knowing my grandchild says for no reason at all uncle mikey's in pennsylvania he's
three he's four years old he just says it all the time and my daughter says maybe he knows
something we don't but being having him identified for dna then we will know he's not in pennsylvania
does it sound crazy whatever it takes to get through it
believe me there are two kinds of suffering now those who don't know and those who do
more than 19 thousand human remains have been collected families have the
option of being notified once at the end or being told every time a dna match is made
a year before this happened nicole petrucelli has been told about four recoveries of her
husband i choose to know every time i i feel like you know if he was sick and he was dying
i would have taken care of him so this is the way i can take care of him and when he's identified
i want to know and i want to take him home mark petrucelli a commodities broker had just
received a promotion that put him in tower number one his remains were first identified
the day after his memorial there are many hundreds of families in fact most families
have never received that first notification and it looks likely at this point that they won't
but it's important for the families to remember that the recovery the identification process will
continue at the medical examiner's office for quite some time probably almost a year so there
is hope and i never give up hope that i'll get his wedding band back that i want so desperately
or that i'll get another phone call about some other remains a couple of weeks ago
i got a phone call that they found his heart i never imagined that his torso wasn't intact
and i never imagined that his heart would be picked up off the ground in the middle of fire
and rubble you count yourself though among the luckier families luckiest of the unlucky
families who have not been lucky tend to see the world trade center site as sacred
a final resting place but that sentiment has not stopped the beginning of reconstruction
they're already working on the subway that ran on this track carrying 60 000 commuters
from new jersey every day the first thing rebuilt will be the subways port authority engineer lou
minnow is in charge he took us under the hudson river into tunnels that flooded in the attack
these cast iron walls are 100 years old but they held up the light at the end of the tunnel is the
trade center site and minnow can see all the way to the lines reopening in 20 months to him
it's a way of fighting back on september 11th he had a different job at the port authority
he was general manager of the world trade center you just want to sit there and you cry
because you think of all the hard efforts of a lot of people to make that happen what the
world trade center meant to downtown new york and then to the entire city and then you thought about
people that were trapped people that were killed and especially people that worked for you all gone
what does rebuilding this rail line mean to you we're saying to the world that we have survived
this is going to be our finest hour and this will be the beginning of the rebuilding of downtown new
york exactly what will be rebuilt will be debated for months michael bloomberg is the new mayor of
new york a lot of people are going to have a say in what is built here eventually yes but
tell me about you what does the mayor of new york want to see right here i think the first thing
is that we want to complete the recovery effort second thing is you do want to make sure that we
repair the infrastructure underground and find whatever that right memorial is above ground
the vietnam memorial took five years before everybody said ah
this is it and then they really did something beautiful and we've got to go through that process
and you will build buildings that will be some residential some commercials some office
some cultural maybe some athletic facilities not clear whether that fits in
but it's just too early to tell what fits now is down in the pit it's the last steel standing from
the twin towers there's a reckoning in spray paint port authority pd 37 dead new york pd 23
fire department of new york 340 and of course two thousand four hundred and twenty others only a
little more than one thousand have been identified how many can be found in the last of the ruins
that question weighs on officer dan henry because among all the people he's looking for he's looking
for his brother fireman joseph henry if in these last days joe isn't found this is going to be his
final resting place along with hundreds of other people what do you think they should do with this
i think there should be a nice a nice-sized park with lots of beautiful trees and flowers
and benches and i think a big i think a big wall big memorial wall with each victim's name on it
and because you know you don't have a cemetery to go to this is going to be the place we go
on his birthday or christmas you know say hello we thought you'd like to see what they've done
with the other target of september 11th the pentagon this was the scene that day and this
is the same spot now they expect to reopen this section on september 11th this year
189 people were killed at the pentagon five of them have never been found
you