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Giuliani appeals to residents and workers, despite their mourning, to come back.
©New York Times
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 23, 2001
NEW YORK -- In ones and twos, uncertain of what they would find in bedrooms they had not slept in and kitchens they had not cooked in for almost two weeks, residents began moving back into a cluster of buildings opposite the ruins of the World Trade Center on Saturday, as rescue workers dug deeper into the rubble left by the terrorist attacks on the twin towers but found no survivors.
The rescuers were slowed by fires that flared as they removed layers of sharp-edged debris and oxygen poured in, igniting small blazes in crevices where firefighters had thought nothing would burn anymore. The rescuers found only parts of bodies on Saturday, and officials said the number of missing remained at 6,333. Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik said the number of those confirmed dead had risen to 261.
Five of the dead -- all New York City firefighters, including one whose son, also a firefighter, is among those missing -- were buried in separate services on Long Island on Saturday as officials prepared for today's interfaith prayer service at Yankee Stadium, which is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. James Earl Jones and Oprah Winfrey will be the hosts, and religious figures like Cardinal Edward Egan, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York; Imam Izak El-Pasha, the leader of the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque in Harlem; and Rabbi Arthur Schneier have been invited. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki are scheduled to speak from a stage set up at second base.
New Jersey officials have scheduled an observance to commemorate that state's victims at Liberty State Park in Jersey City at 6:30 p.m. today.
On Saturday, Giuliani also looked beyond today's Yankee Stadium service to talk about Monday, and what he hoped it would bring to New York.
"We want it to be a normal day, and we want everyone to come into the city," he said before explaining what he meant by "normal."
"Everyone in their own way has to find a way to get back to normal," he said. "Normal means not not feeling sad, and not not mourning. Everybody's going to mourn and feel terrible and feel awful, and then there are going to be times in which people just cry. But they have to be able to, as best they can, get back to work, get back into normal life, get back into enjoying their lives and also stop being afraid. Stop being afraid doesn't mean you can get rid of the emotion, it means overcoming it."
Later Giuliani introduced former President Bill Clinton, who said he had spent time at a center for victims' families.
"I just try to do what the mayor asks," Clinton said, adding that when Giuliani implored New Yorkers to go shopping, Clinton had done so. Clinton also said he would travel this week -- four flights on commercial jets. "I feel confident airline travel is safe and New York is safe."
Clinton said that in the wake of the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, he had authorized the arrest and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile the Bush administration says was behind the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"We also trained commandos for a possible ground action," Clinton said, "but we did not have the necessary intelligence to do it in the way we would have had to do it then. Now, we have support of the people who would not have supported us then, and they give us many more tactical options than were available."
Giuliani said several thousand residents had returned to Lower Manhattan, where building superintendents continued their scramble to clean air-conditioning units caked with debris. Carrying suitcases, backpacks and shopping bags, they showed identification at police checkpoints.
The buildings that reopened on Saturday were at the northern end of Battery Park City. "We feel pretty lucky coming home now -- we thought it would be much longer," said Lena Elguindi as she headed to her apartment at Chambers and West streets with her husband, Yasser. The Elguindis spent several days in Philadelphia with Elguindi's parents. "All the news broadcast from Chambers, so we could see our building and knew it was okay," Elguindi said.
"There's still a lot of uneasiness about the building's structure and about air quality," Elguindi said, adding that neighbors had other concerns. "I know about a lot of families who are not sure if they want their kids in this environment anymore."