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CNN Live At Daybreak

A Somber Place: WTC Debris Sorted At Fresh Kills Landfill

Aired January 15, 2002 - 05:39   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.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Every day tons and tons of debris is removed from the World Trade Center site. It is taken in huge trucks to the Fresh Kills landfill in New York, where investigators sift through it all carefully. As you might imagine, it is a somber place.

Here is CNN's Jason Carroll.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHIEF WILLIAM ALLEY, : There are days we've gone 12,000 tons a day.

JASON CARROLL CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island has become much more than it was originally intended for.

ALLEY: Listen, this isn't a dump. This is sacred ground.

CARROLL: This is where the broken pieces of the World Trade Center end up.

ALLEY: This is a scrapper, who is taking all of the metal that's been gone through.

CARROLL: Chief William Alley guided us for the first extensive tour of the site.

ALLEY: But as you can see, the material gets off-loaded, it gets put on these trucks. There goes a truck there.

CARROLL: This is a place of extremes. Much wasn't recognizable, generic chunks of concrete and metal.

ALLEY: This is what's left of them.

CARROLL: But some things were painfully clear.

ALLEY: These are the vehicles that responded, and this is what happened to their trucks.

CARROLL (on camera): Right over here, this is what used to be a police car. Right next to it, that's a taxicab; behind it, one of the many fire trucks that are out here at this particular site. We're being told that most of these fire trucks are so badly damaged that there is no way that they can ever be put back into service. Although, there is a possibility that at some point, some of these fire trucks could be used for some sort of memorial.

(voice-over): Stacks of cars and trucks line the path to the giant conveyer belts.

ALLEY: Let's go to the conveyors.

CARROLL: Here, course material is sorted in one direction, finer material in another.

ALLEY: They have control over the conveyer belt. If they have to stop it, those red buttons just stops it.

CARROLL (on camera): So what specifically are they looking for when this comes down?

ALLEY: They're looking for personal property and they're looking for possible human remains.

CARROLL: Chief, just explain where you're taking us to now.

ALLEY: We're going to go over to where the property gets decontaminated.

CARROLL (voice-over): And this is where personal items, such as passports and watches are collected, cleaned and sorted, so they can be returned.

ALLEY: And it gets hosed off, goes through this cleaning station. We try to get most of the debris off of it.

CARROLL: A sculpture from Canter Fitzgerald and parts of the United Airlines airplane lay nearby. Somber signs that the work here goes on.

ALLEY: I think of the people who died, and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to connect with that.

CARROLL: Jason Carroll, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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