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CNN Live Today

Brothers Search For Brothers As 9/11 Recovery Work Nears Close

Aired April 08, 2002 - 10:53   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We check in now at ground zero. The grim, round-the-clock recovery work, in fact, is almost completely wrapped up, which is hard to believe. Our Michael Okwu goes to ground zero and checks in with brothers who have been searching for brothers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the months following 9/11, ground zero has offered studies in contrast. September's fire, November's smoke. A mountain of debris, a pit of dust. And, as recovery workers run out of dust to sift, now 70 feet below street level, it is becoming hauntingly clear: come May, their work will be done. And that is at once liberating, and depressing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know how I'm going to react when that day comes, but, you know, there is going to be a day when it is over, and we'll just take it one day at a time.

OKWU (on camera): Where do you think your brother is?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we've been looking in the south tower, over here...

OKWU (voice-over): For five months, after regular shifts with Ladder 23, Rob Carlo (ph) heads to ground zero in search of his brother Michael, one of the 172 firefighters still missing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is some sort of relief that I don't have to actually see my brother in that shape, and then there is a lot of disappointment, also, for my family that we can't bring him home yet.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Part of what has held workers together all this time has been their work. When that is gone, that may be the time when they start really feeling the pain, or start really feeling the sense of loss.

BRIAN LYONS, BROTHER OF WORLD TRADE CENTER VICTIM: Well, I think that today is the 202nd day.

OKWU: Brian Lyons has been searching, too. His brother Michael and Michael's squad brothers presumed dead. Today, he tells me a story about a box of ID cards unearthed from what he believes was a security office in the south tower. LYONS: One of them flipped out and it went into the air, and I caught that one, right? When I caught that one, I read the name on it, and the name on it was "Michael Lyons."

OKWU: Not his brother Michael Lyons, but still. The beginnings of ground zero lore, mystical offerings that help strong men make sense of loss.

(on camera): Did you take that to be some kind of an omen at the time?

LYONS: A sign, sure. I knew that they were there.

OKWU (voice-over): As a foreman, Lyons oversees recovery teams, lately using this 58-ton steel beam, the last standing vestige of the south tower, as a beacon to the buried.

LYONS: It just kept saying, you know, Go by the beam, 10 feet north, 10 feet east."

OKWU: Recently here, dozens of recoveries. Part of the reason this flag-topped beam will be the last structure removed on the last day, followed by a funeral-like procession of workers.

Over 2,000 people are still missing. As grapplers hoist potentially precious cargo, men comb the dirt, occasionally finding solace in the broken steel they've transformed into symbols of hope.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've realized the fact that maybe we won't find my brother, and we will deal with that when the time comes. It's not going to change the outcome one way or another, and, you know, one day we will see each other again.

OKWU: Michael Okwu, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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