Conor O'Clery watched this week as 13 more bodies, perhaps the last, were removed from the remaining debris.
The twin memorial columns of light, with sleet sweeping through them like curtains, splashed against scurrying low clouds and bathed ground zero below in an eerie, reflected glow. It illuminated the long metal ramp running up to street level, on which 100 rescue workers stood silently along each side, a few feet apart, hands pressing against wet foreheads in salute. Four groups of firemen in the black jackets with bright green bands that have become so familiar since September 11th walked ever-so-slowly up the ramp carrying shallow basins like stretchers, the contents covered with American flags.
Behind them in the giant pit, the machines had stopped moving and there was little sound other than that of passenger jets on their descent to La Guardia airport, appearing and disappearing low overhead as their powerful headlights cut through gaps in the clouds. The men held their salute until the bodies had been placed in white ambulances with flashing emergency lights, and driven off in a cortege of police cars and fire engines.
Then they trudged back into the pit and within minutes the excavators and grapplers had resumed their work, delicately pulling twisted metal beams out of the rubble under the watchful eyes of rescue crews armed with picks, hoes, trowels, body bags and folded flags.
This happened around 9.30 p.m. on Thursday, a day when, from my 42nd-storey apartment nearby, I saw the same sad procession repeated many times, as a total of 13 bodies were found, the most in any one 24-hour period this year.
Only now, 28 weeks after the September 11th attacks, have rescue workers reached the pancaked remains of 30 floors of the south tower, including the lobby where senior firemen had set up a command post by the huge bronze and marble Morgan Stanley sign. The south tower was the first to collapse, so unexpectedly and so suddenly that the firemen who rushed in had no chance to escape. Asst Chief Donald Burns, 61, from Suffolk County was the most senior of 10 firefighters whose remains were recovered on Thursday. The day before, the only city policewoman to die, Moira Smith (38) from the 13th precinct, was found, along with two court officers and two Port Authority police officers.
We watched in the grey light of dawn as a slow procession of 25 NYPD police cars, lights flashing but without sirens, escorted the ambulance with her remains past the end of our street, where a few early-morning commuters paused and removed their hats. Every corpse found is a victory for the exhausted rescue workers, and one more family can hold a proper funeral.
Thomas Manley, sergeant-at-arms for the Uniformed Firefighters' Association, described Thursday as "a very good day". "We're glad to see people come out," he said. "That's what we're trying to do here, bring everyone home."
There won't be many more such days, however. Apart from the uneven plateau of debris and metal in the south-east corner of the site, the rescue workers have reached bedrock, 20 metres below street level, over most of ground zero. Some day soon, perhaps by the end of May, the excavators will scrape up the last buckets-full of the 1.4 million tons of debris onto a truck.
Despite the minute inspection of the dirt, which goes on around the clock, fewer than 800 of the 2,830 victims have been recovered and identified, and only 166 of the 343 firemen have been located up to yesterday.
The excavation of the south-east corner has this week also revealed a 30-metre-wide gash in the retaining wall around the pit - sometimes called the bathtub - which keeps out the water from the nearby Hudson River. There is no imminent danger of collapse but engineers have had to dig deep wells to relieve the pressure and will seal the gap with steel and concrete anchored to the bedrock.
New York authorities have yet to decide what to put into the bathtub when it is finally cleaned and scoured, and the close community of dedicated rescue workers face the heart-wrenching fact that no more bodies or identifiable remains will be found.