The gigantic New York garbage dump that holds debris and human remains from September 11

09/07/2021 4:33 PM

• Clarín.com

• Dresses

Updated 09/07/2021 17:42

A mountain of rubble that exceeds 25 meters is all that was left of the Twin Towers.

For some,

 that hill represents the resilience of New York;

for others it is an open wound

.

There, the materials of the buildings demolished in the attacks of September 11, 2001, are mixed with the human remains of the victims.

It is located in

Fresh Kills

on Staten Island, in what was

the largest open-air garbage dump in the world

until it closed in March 2001. Six months later, the Al Qaeda attack forced

the site to be reopened to house the rubble

of the World Trade Center.

Today it is a place that

generates consternation for some relatives

of the victims.

It was the largest open-air garbage dump in the world until it closed in March 2001. Photo: Video capture.

The first trucks arrived on the night of September 11, 2001, and for ten months

Dennis Diggins

directed the work to move

600,000 tons of rubble from "Ground Zero."

"I don't know what it would be like if I had a relative here. But I can tell you that the material has been treated with the utmost respect,"

Diggins recalled 20 years later in dialogue with Thomas Urbain of the AFP agency.

"It is not mixed with garbage, there is a separation," he

added from the top of the mountain of rubble from which Lower Manhattan is seen.

The gigantic New York landfill houses debris and human remains from 9/11.

Photo: Video capture.

The area became a small town, with

thousands of sanitation employees, police, FBI agents and Secret Service.

They all combed the site for clues, valuables and remains that could help identify the victims.

Retrieve the bodies

Kurt and Diane Horning were among the relatives of those killed in those attacks who quickly visited the area.

His son Matthew was a database administrator who died

when the North Tower collapsed an hour and 42 minutes after it was hit by one of the hijacked planes.

They were stressed as soon as they arrived:

the site was full of seagulls and mud.

They found a credit card, a shoe, a watch.

For ten months Dennis Diggins directed the work to move 600,000 tons of rubble from "Ground Zero".

Photo: Video capture.

One worker told them that

for the first 45 days, due to lack of equipment, they worked with rakes and shovels.

"The idea was to work within budget, quickly ... 'We are going to show the resilience of the country and not stop at the dead.'

And that's what they did," said Diane.

Diggins says instead that

neither he nor his workers treated the area as a normal landfill and operated "with respect."

The Horning believe that some of Matthew's remains are buried there.

Photo: Video capture.

"It was always known that there were human remains. We never stopped thinking about it," he

said, visibly moved.

He also claims that

once the trucks left the site, he hired divers to search the surrounding dock

and make sure that nothing was left uninspected.

Between the beginning and the end of the operation,

this rubble hill was formed that exceeds 25 meters in height.

This hill of rubble was formed that exceeds 25 meters in height.

Photo: Video capture.

Separated from the rest of the hill by an insulating layer,

the pile of rubble was covered by plastic tarps.

The Horning

believe that some of Matthew's remains are buried there.

To date, only a fragment of his son's bone has been recovered.

His attempts to remove all the remains were rejected by the city government,

then led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"My own government decided it wasn't good enough to bury him."

Photo: Video capture.

"It was a double loss. Some fans decided it was a good idea to blow my son up.

But then my own government decided I wasn't good enough to bury him,"

says Diane.

The Horning and

other families proposed that the remains be sent to other sites in Fresh Kills

that had never harbored trash, but to no avail.

In 2005,

17 of them took legal action.

They tried to get the case to the Supreme Court, but the judges refused to examine it.

The site still dumps more than 40,000 cubic meters of methane per day from the decomposing garbage deposited there.

Photo: Video capture.

"I felt personally responsible for dragging the other families into it.

Now they have no hope and I must live with it," Diane laments.

A garbage park

The site still dumps more than 40,000 cubic meters of methane per day from decomposing garbage deposited there for many decades.

When it's safe,

New York authorities plan to open a memorial park on the site in 2035.

But the Horning are not interested.

New York authorities plan to open a memorial park on the site in 2035. Photo: Video capture.

"It's a garbage can," says Diane.

"It is as if on Christmas morning you give your son a beautifully wrapped package and when he opens it there is garbage in it."

AFP

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