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American Morning

Place That Saw Most Devastation on 09-11 Was Downtown New York

Aired March 11, 2002 - 07:28   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: The entire world felt the impact of the terrorist attack last fall. But the place that saw the most devastation and largest loss of life was downtown New York.

And CNN's Gary Tuchman is standing by now where the twin towers once stood, now known as ground zero -- good morning, Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT:. Paula, good morning to you.

The immense confusion and chaos is no longer part of the daily fabric here at ground zero, but the incredible sadness is. This is sacred ground behind me. This, in essence, is a graveyard for more than 2,000 people. Twenty-eight hundred people perished when those planes crashed through the World Trade Center towers that stood there, but only 753 bodies have been recovered in all this time.

It looks remarkably different behind me. When we were down there the morning after with the workers, we saw thousands of workers down there frantically looking for the possibility of any survivors. As it turns out, only five people were pulled out of the rubble in the hours after this disaster, the last person being pulled out 27 hours later.

Now, 83 percent of the rubble has been removed in these six months. It's estimated the work will be done by the end of May. Initially it was thought it would take one full year to get all this rubble out of here. But, of course, we've never dealt with anything like this before. No one knew exactly how long it would take.

By the time this is all done, it's estimated that $600 million will be spent for this clean up effort. The original estimate was $2 billion. But the fact is there are still families all across the world, when that phone rings, they're wondering if that's the call that their loved one's remains have been found.

What's going to happen to the site? We don't know at this point. Ultimately, it will be up to the mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, the governor of New York State, George Pataki, to make that final decision.

Paula, back to you.

ZAHN:. Thanks, Gary.

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