Renewed search for 9/11 remains in New York

Scientists are to sift through debris from the World Trade Center in an attempt to find 1,000 missing victims…

New York City officials are to begin a three-month search for the remains of more than 1,000 missing victims of the 9/11 attacks - however, some relatives of the deceased say it is too little, reports the BBC.

Nearly a decade on from the 11 September attacks, the debris from the World Trade Center site is still being examined - partly a reflection of the enormity of the task and the huge amount of debris involved.

It is also, the relatives of some of those killed that day in 2001 contend, the result of years of delays that should have been avoided. Among those relatives are Diane and Kurt Horning.

‘We've been told that anything larger than a quarter-inch has been removed from that site,' Diane says, referring to the place where much of the rubble recovered from Ground Zero has been placed.

‘Yet when we go there we find personal items that are certainly larger than a quarter of an inch and which may have meant the world to people. Consequently we worry that there may have been remains of the same size or bigger that were ignored.' It is a dreadful thought that eight-and-a-half years on from the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, the partial remains of some of those killed may be lying unceremoniously in a landfill site. That site is at the rather unfortunately named Fresh Kills area of Staten Island, just across the harbour from Manhattan. The word ‘kill' comes from an old Dutch word for a riverbed and is used in much of this part of the US.

After the 9/11 attacks, much of the debris was taken to Fresh Kills - the former rubbish dump for the city. It was - at the time - sifted through.

Now some 844 cubic yards of debris more recently discovered in the past few years at Ground Zero are going to be searched. Scientists led by New York's chief medical examiner will spend three months sifting through the new material. CLICK HERE FOR MORE WORLD NEWS