US: For the relatives of the missing at ground zero, it was the end of a long vigil, writes Conor O'Clery in New York
I've watched from my apartment body bodies being taken out of ground zero in the last eight months, sometimes singly, sometimes two or three at a time, often late at night, and always with rescue workers saluting the stretcher as it passed. But yesterday's funeral, when an empty stretcher was carried up the steel ramp from the seven-story pit bearing nothing but a folded flag, was the most moving of all. The flag stood for 1,731 of the 2,823 victims of the World Trade Centre attack whose remains were pulverised and never found.
Relatives clutching framed pictures of their loved ones watched sobbing from a special stand as the stretcher was borne past 220 saluting firemen, police and construction workers. The only sound was that of a dead march from a New York Police and Fire Service combination band, beaten on drums decorated with shamrocks.
At the top of the ramp an Irish flag hung beside the Stars and Stripes in memory of the large number of Irish-Americans among the firemen and police officers who died violently on September 11th.
There, buglers sounded the Last Post, the sound floating out across the calm waters of the Hudson, where a solid white mist rolled onshore, eerily reminiscent of the dust clouds that billowed down Manhattan's streets on September 11th.
The ceremony to mark the end of the recovery effort began at 10.29 a.m., the time when the second of the twin towers collapsed, with a fire bell sounding out four sets of five rings, the traditional signal for a fallen firefighter.
It ended 20 minutes later when a yellow flatbed truck carrying the last metal beam to be cut down ground its way up the ramp.
Draped in black muslin, the 36-foot-long beam - to become a memorial some day - represented the laying to rest of the two stark 110-storey buildings that defined Manhattan's skyline. It will be stored in a hangar at Kennedy Airport.
The procession made its way down West Side Highway to Canal Street, the route used by rescue services. It was followed by a helmeted fireman leading a brown horse with empty boots in the stirrups, and a long line of relatives clutching each other, their distress bringing tears to the rows of bystanders. Five police helicopters flew overhead in formation and another helicopter trailed a gigantic Stars and Stripes up and down the Hudson river.
There was applause for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the hero of the September 11th aftermath who helped restore calm to a panicky city.
The recovery effort ended three months early and under budget, thanks to the patriotic fervour of rescue workers who laboured around the clock, braving acrid smoke and asbestos-laden dust, and who must now face closure themselves. They removed 108,444 truckloads of debris, weighing a total of 1.64 million tons. "It was tough to come here every day and now it's tough to leave," said firefighter John Keating.
It could have been so much worse. Two weeks after the attacks, officials put the death toll at 6,700. It steadily fell as it emerged that almost everyone beneath the impact point of the planes escaped with their lives, and hundreds of duplicate names and errors were found on the list.
For the relatives of the missing it was the end of a long vigil. "It finalised something," said Mrs Ellen Saracini, from outside Philadelphia, whose husband Victor was the pilot of the United Airlines flight which hit the south tower and whose body was never found. "Now we have to celebrate all of their lives."
"This is the closest point I guess I can get to being with him again," Mr David Bauer said. His father, an employee of Cantor Fitzgerald, was never identified. Mr Roman Gertsberg, a Russian immigrant, was there with his wife to remember their daughter, also from Cantor Fitzgerald, also missing. "There are days we don't want to wake up," he said. "I still hope they find something."