While in NYC, we were taken on an "up close and personal" tour of Ground Zero.

This was our first view of the area that was the two towers of the World Trade Center. The remains of Tower 6 are at the upper left of the picture, with the what's left of the north wall of Tower 1 slightly to the right of it.

In the hole near the center of the picture, slightly to the right of the ladder, there's a white car on the left side, which looks unscathed.

The solid concrete wall at the upper right is the seawall that they're working to shore up. This wall runs around the perimeter as a sort of basement wall, extending 84 feet below street level down to bedrock. It keeps seawater from migrating up through the hole. They are reinforcing it with steel inserted into holes drilled back into them with concrete pumped in around it, in an effort to keep them from collapsing into the hole.

This is the north wall of Tower One, which is the last remaining part of the tall structure that had become a symbol of the devastation. An hour after we left, they finished pulling it down. While we were there they were cutting notches in the bottom to facilitate its felling. Some of the structure had the words "save" spray-painted on them in flourescent orange, presumably for use in a future memorial.

In this closer view, you can see the steelworker's torch cutting away at the base.

Obviously, we were down in the hole when I took these.

It looked like a city dump, but the only thing that was recognizable was steel and rubble that had been concrete. The rest was a fine mud made from the ash of the burning building. The site is kept watered down to miminize the hazardous dust. There was little else left that was identifiable.

Thanks, Richie, for the eye-opening visit. We will never forget. New Yorkers certainly won't either.

The return trip included a drive through Central Park (never mind that it's closed to auto traffic!). Maybe we shouldn't go there either...

Mark

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