The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 145

Here's a time lapse video showing the WTC memorial and museum under construction from 2004 through 2011:




The memorial will be open to the public beginning September 12 but requires obtaining a free timed pass because the grounds are hard to access due to the ongoing construction around the entire site.

Meanwhile Steve Rosenbaum has put together an iPad app recounting the 9/11 attacks and subsequent rebuilding efforts putting a special focus on the memorial:

It contains some 400 still photographs and hours of video clips. It will be free to the public between September 1 and September 12 (mark your calendar) and can be purchased for $9.95 thereafter.

And it will be available exclusively on the Apple iPad.

“The app lays it out in clear bold chunks—here’s the story before, when the World Trade Center was being built, and then after it was built, and the day of the attacks, and what’s happened since,” noted writer-director Steve Rosenbaum.

A documentary film producer and web developer, Mr. Rosenbaum has been chronicling the goings on at Ground Zero since the day the Towers fell. Shortly after 9/11, he placed an ad in the Village Voice asking for photos and videos documenting the event. He eventually assembled a collection of some 500 hours of footage, which became the CameraPlanet archive. Some of the best material wound up in his 2002 documentary, 7 Days in September, which the Times called “almost unbearably powerful.” Mr. Rosenbaum rightly points out, “If you watch it, there are things in the film that I protected, images and stories that were never going to be seen by my children’s children if I hadn’t rescued them.”

As for the new project, while it includes a few chilling clips of the attacks, it is largely concerned with the creation of Michael Arad’s memorial and the 9/11 Museum.

In a more somber note about the attacks, the NYC Medical Examiner was able to identify the 1,629th victim of the attacks using DNA evidence. Only 1,629 out of the 2,753 victims have been positively identified from remains recovered from Ground Zero.

And that figure doesn't include those who died since then from ailments associated with service in the relief and recovery efforts at Ground Zero in the weeks and months after the attacks. In one instance, more NYPD officers died from ailments believed due to Ground Zero exposure after the attacks than those who died in the attacks themselves.