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CNN Live At Daybreak

America's New War: Massive Effort in New York to Remove Rubble

Aired September 24, 2001 - 08:42   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: On the rescue operation that continues on this Monday morning, it's a massive job, but this is really only half of the process here. You see the rubble being removed on a daily basis, but after this point, it is taken out to Staten Island, ironically to a landfall area called Fresh Kills.

CNN's Jason Bellini more from there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the land of no hope, and no delusions, the second to last stop for wreckage of the World Trade Center, disasters. At this Staten Island landfill, it's sorted, sifted, raked, and sniffed through.

As piles are dropped off to vehicles, they are spreading material out, fairly flat on the ground, and then the dogs run through the piles, looking for any remains that they can identify.

BELLINI: Trained noses help the trained eyes of FBI and NYPD, FAA and other investigators. The agents and their volunteers know this junk contains answers, the most pressing of which identities of thousands of people, still missing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We could find, just something as fall small as finger, or a tip of a finger even, that is going to allow the police departments to be able to get a healthy DNA match on somebody, and that's going to allows closure.

BELLINI: Little things tug hard at humanity of those tasked with this labor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today, I found a woman's necklace and was in the rubble. It's a small beautiful necklace stays with me that that necklace was on someone in the World Trade Center that day.

BELLINI: But little else is even worth saving. In one pile, crushed police cars and fire engines, sad and unsalvageable.

(on camera): Here the thick steel beams that once held up floors of the World Trade Center, now, warped, severed and ready for burial.

BELLINI: The chore will take months. Of the 68,000 tons of debris delivered from Manhattan, only a third has been rummaged through.

JAMES LUONGO, NEW YORK POLICE: We're trying to do as quick as we possibly can. I hear estimations from six months to a year. I don't know.

BELLINI: The work goes on 24 hours a day. The fragments of lives lost, they say, deserve one last look through.

Jason Bellini, CNN, Staten Island, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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