Numbers: 10:39 a.m., 5/30/02
Two thousand eight hundred and twenty-three believed dead. Three hundred and forty-three of them were firefighters. Many were killed instantly, but perhaps over a thousand of them survived the initial impacts. More than three hundred of them took advantage of the extra last minutes granted to them to phone or email to the outside world, looking for news of hope or leaving a final “I love you”. At least thirty-seven took the only route of hope they saw, a vertical exit that held no hope.
At 8:17 p.m. yesterday evening the last fifty-eight ton, thirty-foot steel beam, column 1001b, from Two World Trade Center was cut from its base. Its fall marked the end of the thirty-seven week period where hundreds worked at “Ground Zero” to clean the debris while searching for any signs of those who perished there. One thousand one hundred-and-two victims have been identified and nearly 20,000 body parts have been found. Sixteen and a half acres that once housed towers standing 110 stories high now hold only memories, ghosts and lost dreams.
Twenty minutes of ceremony without speeches. An NPR reporter said, “Words were inadequate and unnecessary”.
A bell chimes four sets of five rings – the call for a fallen firefighter.
An empty stretcher, covered with the thirteen stripes and fifty stars, carried by ten bearers.
A final number: 911. A new buzz-word to creep into the national vocabulary. Let it be more than that.
Now is not the hour to quibble about what we should have done, what we should be doing. Leave the politics behind for this moment. What comes next can wait. This moment is for 2,823 people who went to work one morning and did not come home that night. This moment is for the spouse whose mate’s wedding ring was found in the rubble just yesterday. This moment is for the woman, born on September 11th, who was there when they pried the trunk of her husband’s salvaged car open; the last birthday present her husband would buy for her was waiting inside the trunk for her. This moment is for the families of the firefighters who were carrying a disabled woman down the final flight of stairs but were still too far from the exit. This moment is for all of us left behind, trying to make sense of the senseless numbers. All else can wait.