The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 45

A coalition of 9/11 families despise the revised IFC plans. Go figure. I could have told you that the IFC was intent upon putting together a slick and glossy image, but there was no getting around their intentions to run all kinds of anti-American programming.

A coalition of 15 groups representing 9/11 families has declared war on the International Freedom Center, just as the project goes before the public this week in a last-ditch bid to avoid being tossed from Ground Zero.
"Our numbers are only going to grow, and we're not going to stop until the IFC is off the site," vowed Anthony Gardner, one of the alliance's leaders.

"The IFC does not deserve a place on sacred ground, and must go."

Gardner and other 9/11 family members say the IFC's latest proposal, for a 300,000-square- foot museum devoted to the quest for freedom, has failed to change their minds about the project.

Their opposition comes just days after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton joined their cause.

"They're trying to put new bells and whistles on it to make it more palatable," but that won't work, said Jack Lynch, whose firefighter son died on 9/11.

The NY Post weighs in on Rudy Guiliani's opposition.

And, as a reminder of just how 9/11 continues to hit home every day, as workers began the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank building across from the WTC complex, they came across what could be bone fragments that could be remains of victims from the terrorist attacks on the roof of the building.

The fragments were taken to the medical examiner's office for a determination as to whether they are human remains and whether they could yield identification information:

"We don't know if those bones are human," said Ellen Borakove, director of public affairs for the medical examiner. Samples of the fragments will probably be examined under a microscope. She said she did not know how soon the results would be available.

Three coin-size bone fragments were found on the roof in August 2002.

If the newly discovered fragments are human, it is possible that DNA could be extracted and permit identification of the victims. Through August, the medical examiner had recovered 19,964 human remains from the attack, permitting the identification of 1,594 of the 2,749 victims.

Two World Trade Center, the south tower, stood almost directly opposite 130 Liberty Street. Its collapse caused winds of tornado force and an impact that shook the ground like an earthquake. Pieces of the tower's columns crashed into the facade of the bank building, carving a 15-story gash. More than 1,700 windows were shattered.

Meanwhile, the trial against the Port Authority for negligence in the 1993 WTC bombing progressed, with plaintiffs claiming that the twin towers were unsafe. This may have a bearing on suits filed in the 9/11 attacks although there were significant changes in the policies and procedures for evacuations and safety measures implemented after 1993.

The plaintiffs argue that the Port Authority put profits ahead of security and safety at the facility. The 1993 bombing resulted in 6 murdered, and over 1,000 injured. The basement parking complex was blown apart, resulting in severe damage to the Vista International Hotel, which was adjacent to the Towers along West Street. It had taken some of the employees in the towers several hours to descend from the upper floors, many in darkness and in smoke filled stairwells.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center.