Day-to-day at Ground Zero, a landscape of love and loss

Steve Landfield’s column appears twice a month in NJ Jewish News.

Like most people, I will never forget where I was on Sept. 11, 2001. In my case, it was on top of the highest hill in Parsippany, looking down over the distant burning fires in the city. Soon after, I stood by the still burning remains, lit starkly at night by floodlights. Like most, I will never forget that image.

Little did I know that in the ensuing five years, I would come to work in lower Manhattan, just about two blocks from that 16-acre chasm we now know as Ground Zero.

So what is it like on a typical day at the World Trade Center, five years later?

Ironically, but understandably, the site has become a popular tourist destination. In fact, I only know of two people who refuse to go there.

Every day the subway is full of tourists, both foreign and domestic, looking for Ground Zero. They pose, smiling, for family pictures, as if they were simply standing at the Grand Canyon. I guess you want to show your friends and neighbors you were there, but the whole thing just seems so out of place and disrespectful.

And it’s not as if they can see much of the site anyway. As construction has finally started, there is a double row of fences and trailers that blocks the view from most places. You have to know exactly where to go if you really want to see much of anything. And of course, even then, there is really not much to see. Despite the passage of five years, the place remains little more than a recess in the ground.

Nearly every manner of conspiracy theorist has set up shop, hawking their fables to anyone willing to listen. Representatives of the “Repent Now” brand of religious fanaticism find the place irresistible, handing out fliers to passersby, much like the discount clothing stores a block or so away.

Even the police cannot work together. Most people passing by don’t know it, but there is an ongoing political feud between the Port Authority Police Department and the NYPD. Somehow, the NYPD got the idea in their heads that the Port Authority is not adequately guarding the space. So the NYPD has posted its own officers, with police cars with emergency lights flashing, at each corner entrance to the site, effectively blocking Port Authority access. Meanwhile, just inside the fence, not to be outdone, the Port Authority has posted its own officers in their cars. It’s become so petty that the security director for the Port Authority recently lost his job because he had the audacity to give a young NYPD officer a tour of the site.

So much for the everyday ironies of life in lower Manhattan. There are, of course, also more somber things to discuss.

I frequently run into surviving firemen who rushed in to try to save people in the towers and who later dove into the cleanup and recovery effort, working tirelessly for weeks at great personal sacrifice.

Unfortunately, the stories you have heard about them becoming ill from exposure to the air and toxins at the site are true. Although they don’t like to talk about it, I run into firemen who acknowledge their health problems — one in particular whose cheeks are gaunt and who is clearly the picture of poor health. Thanks to former EPA administrator Christie Whitman and “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani, who each told us that the air downtown was safe, these workers were not properly warned or protected. Now as Whitman and Giuliani each try to protect their hide by blaming the other; the men and the women who worked on the site are looking for answers.

On a positive note, this week the new 9/11 Tribute Center opened. I had a chance to preview it last week, as a lower Manhattan resident, just days after President Bush visited. To say it is an emotional place is an understatement. The center has stark reminders of that horrible day. Recovered artifacts like a window from one of the planes that struck the tower, handguns melted together from the fires. One wall displays the missing posters that went up around the site as desperate relatives looked for missing loved ones. A list of those who lost their lives is projected on the wall, a list that takes five panels of its own. A wall of photographs celebrates the lives of those who died that day.

Downstairs is a gallery where visitors can post their own thoughts and reminiscences. Since the center had only been viewed at that time by the families and local residents, almost all of the notes were from the families who lost a loved one. Standing out in my mind was a note from the parents of a woman from Indiana who had just moved to New York three weeks earlier. The note says, “Three days later we came to New York to find her…but we couldn’t.”

A living reminder from those whose lives will never be the same.