Every night it seems, under the harsh glare of floodlights, work stops at Ground Zero and a ritual begins, visible to all of us who live in the high apartment blocks nearby. An ambulance with flashing lights is driven onto the still-steaming site.
A stretcher covered with an American flag is brought up from the depths and carried to the ambulance past dozens of saluting fireman and rescue workers. A chaplain says a prayer and another body is driven off to the mortuary.
Three months to the day since the September 11th attacks which brought the twin towers of the World Trade Centre crashing down, bodies are still being recovered, and at a faster rate than before.
In that time about half of the 1.2 million tons of the concrete, steel and other wreckage from the 110-story towers has been transported away, but another 600,000 tons remains to be removed from below ground level, and from the wrecked buildings still standing around the perimeter like a scene from the second World War.
Ground Zero is now a pit rather than a pile of debris. The recovery of bodies and remains stalled in November but since the rescue workers reached the lower parts of the stairwells and lifts some two weeks ago, more intact bodies have been found, including 12 in a stairwell two Saturdays ago.
Another seven corpses were found on Friday evening, bringing to 232 the total of intact bodies recovered from the 3,057 people estimated to have been killed in the collapse of the towers and the two hijacked aircraft. Another 13 were found since Friday, including the bodies of five of the 343 firefighters who died.
Mrs Diane Kerwin, whose husband Ronnie Kerwin of 288 squad was found on Saturday, said, "I'm at peace knowing that that they were able to find him and bring him home." The remains of only 500 victims have been identified, many through DNA matches.
The gruesome discoveries are greeted as small triumphs by the rescue workers, who use pickaxes and other hand tools to work delicately around human remains while excavators temporarily halt their work gouging out the compacted debris.
Each find means that another family can achieve closure and say goodbye with a funeral. "It's a hell of a thing to say, but we are really making progress," Deputy Fire Chief Charles Blaich said.
Deputy Fire Commissioner Francis Gribbon said: "We always expected to find as we got to the lower stairwells, more people. There was a stream of people coming out of the stairwells as the buildings collapsed."
The rescuers have always believed that the further down they dig, the more chance there is of intact bodies being found because of the way the towers fell, pulverising people trapped on the higher floors but leaving those below entombed in pockets of space deep under the towers. The search work is expected to continue until February.