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CNN Live At Daybreak

People Flocking to See World Trade Center Site

Aired January 24, 2002 - 06:56   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: Thousands of people from around the country are flocking to New York City's newest attraction. It's a scene many people feel compelled to see for themselves.

CNN's Keith Olbermann takes us there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH OLBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At the Columbus Circle Station, the token clerks write messages only when they hear the same question endlessly. The answer was written just after Christmas. Happy holidays, it says, to ground zero, take Downtown A to Chambers Street.

Out of towners now go to ground zero the way they used to go to Broadway or the Statue of Liberty, thus the construction of a viewing platform at Fulton (ph) Street and Broadway, 5,500 visitors a day, most of them take pictures. Does that make them heartless?

Was it heartless to go to a small town in Pennsylvania to hear a president speak, to tread on Gettysburg's most hallowed ground? Residents there for decades thought so.

Are the visitors to the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor ghouls? Do only conspiracy freaks go to Ford's Theater or the Texas Schoolbook Depository?

Humans need to see with their own eyes. To vicariously experience tragedy is not to gawk at it, nor to feel a guilty thrill, nor to disrespect the memory of those who died.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well it hit us in our heart. It's -- it hurt everybody, and I want to see what happened to this city and what happened here.

OLBERMANN: The term being used here now is pilgrimage. But it may still be more than that, it may also be recovery.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We lost a young man who was a contemporary of my oldest son, and we're going to go over the ground zero to pay our respects. We were to his -- they had a memorial service for him up in Connecticut and we went to that, and now we're going to bring closure to the situation by going to ground zero.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tickets.

OLBERMANN: At the World Trade Center platform you don't just wait in line, or to use our New York term wait on line, you are directed a few blocks east to the South Street seaport (ph) to pick up a free ticket.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Two for today?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thanks.

OLBERMANN: Thus you must pass a gauntlet of vendors down Fulton Street and store after store that has been starving for your business these four months. And finally into the seaport itself where the ticket you get will be for a few hours from now or even for tomorrow. What are the odds that as you spend some time here you will also spend some money, and this place needs your money?

Three blocks to the southwest of the platform, businesses have been reduced to writing we're open on the very concrete barricades that surround them. A pilgrimage. And when the memorial, any kind of memorial rises here, a pilgrimage and an industry.

Keith Olbermann, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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