The Hindu : International : New start for families after 9/11

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Saturday, Sep 11, 2004

International

International

New start for families after 9/11

By Tatsha Robertson

An aerial view showing the footprint of the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan, New York on September 10, 2004. A memorial service is being held today for the thousands who died in the Al-Qaeda terror strike of September 11, 2001. — AP

NEW YORK, SEPT. 10. Three years after her husband, a firefighter, was killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Charlene Fiore has begun to build a new life. Last month, she married another firefighter, one who had helped recover bodies from the rubble of the twin towers.

``We are starting over. It's something different, said Ms. Fiore (48), who lives on Staten Island. ``It's not easy to move on, but we have to.''

Saturday marks the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that took 2,976 lives in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, and by now, most residents of the city struck the hardest, like Fiore, have decided to put that day behind them and move on with their lives.

The former trade centre site, where a memorial service will be held on Saturday, has become a popular stop for sombre tourists and a bustling construction zone for the Freedom Towers, a mammoth glass structure designed to recapture the title of the tallest building in the world.

The weekend ceremonies are expected to draw many widowed husbands and wives, but there will also be new spouses.

``I think we are moving on, but we will never forget,'' said Betsy Gotbaum, the city's public advocate, an elected official who acts as ombudsman for citizen complaints about government services.

Deal with life

Even so, New Yorkers have had to slow down with deal with life under the constant threat of terrorism. Bomb threats, police checks on public buses, and machine-toting security officers in Penn and Grand Central stations have become as common as subway peddlers.

The cacophony of honking horns and emergency sirens in Midtown are never ending, and tourists have returned by the thousands to Times Square — though fewer have foreign accents these days.

``There are always these reminders,'' Gotbaum said.

``The fact that we are always on orange alert can be irritating.

New Yorkers like to look at a problem and solve it and move on, but given that we are always on orange alert, we don't know what to do about it. It makes you anxious.''

In Lower Manhattan, where the attacks occurred, the massive rebuilding effort has begun. Each day, hundreds of visitors and about a dozen vendors hawking photographs of the two planes crashing into the towers, mill around the former World Trade Center site.

But each day there is less of the remnants of the disaster to see. On July 4th, the cornerstone of Freedom Towers was laid.

Construction workers also are busy finishing 7 World Trade Center, the last building to fall from the attacks, but the first to rise again.

The new Path station for trains from northern New Jersey has been open for months, and dozens of high-rise buildings are being developed nearby.

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