911 MONUMENT of the MISSING
Our goal is to create a renewed awareness of this tragedy and establish a 911 MONUMENT OF THE MISSING.
We are also thankful for the acknowledgment that history reminds us that in any tragedy no human life should be forgotten and a remembrance of their being must be preserved. We will build this monument and honor their lives as we continue to bring attention to this cause.
These Are The Facts:
On September 11, 2001 the United States and in particular NYC was dealt a crushing blow. As events unfolded an airliner departing from Boston made its way toward NYC and then at 8:46am veered into WTC 1 immediately creating a fireball that led to a call to action. As the fully fueled jetliner exploded unleashing its liquid cargo throughout the World Trade Center Tower 1 floors 93-99. Fire departments police and emergency personnel raced to the scene. As they entered the tower to bring the fire under control and evacuate its occupants the second tower World Trade Center 2 was struck at 9:02am by a similar FATE. Another jetliner fully field burst into flames as it struck its target on the 77-85 Floors. NYC was under siege, the two towers burning out of control. As the heat enveloped the towers they succumbed to its intensity. WTC 1 started to crumble at 9:59am and ultimately fell. Twenty Nine minutes later at 10:28am World Trade Center 2 met a similar fate, also crumbling a falling obliterating its contents and occupants alike.
The result of the catastrophic event was chaos at the site and throughout the entire City. As time passed a list was prepared of those individuals that were reported missing. Nothing in the history of mass fatality events prepared America’s forensic community for the task of identifying those who died when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. The number of victims, the condition of their remains, and the duration of the recovery effort made their identification the greatest forensic challenge ever undertaken in this country.
For those that were identified, DNA testing was conducted mostly on shredded pieces of human flesh, pieces that were tucked away in protected areas away from the site, blown outward by the explosion and lifted away in the debris cloud to land on tops of other buildings, in sewer grates, some as far as a quarter of a mile away.
So what happened to the bodies of the 9/1 1 victims who simply vanished without a trace? The same thing that happened to the building structure, surface materials, office furniture, and “indestructible” black boxes from the two Boeing 767 airplanes. In a tumbling mass of debris, pieces accelerating at over 120 MPH towards earth, colliding and changing direction in unimaginable random patterns – the action acted like a high-pressure grinder producing little more than powder from everything inside the towers.
As one of the sifters remarked:
“The biggest piece of office furniture recovered from Ground Zero was a tiny fragment of a telephone keypad.”
Most everything inside the buildings was transformed into a mixture of tiny shards and micron-sized powder which floated through the air, much carried off and dumped into the Atlantic. The homogeneous dust recovered, sifted, and bucketed consisted of only 50% of the mass of the Twin Towers. In short, the bodies are nowhere, and everywhere at the same time.
Of the 2,753 people killed in the attack, only about 300 bodies were found intact. Of the 20,000 pieces of bodies found, 6,000 were small enough to fit into a test tube. The attack presented investigators with a case unlike any seen before. In all building collapses prior to the World Trade Center towers, bodies were recovered intact. Falling buildings crush victims – they don’t shred them or cause them to vanish altogether. In the Twin Towers attack, more than 1 ,100 victims simply disappeared — not one shred of skin or piece of bone could be found despite meticulous sifting efforts to recover the remains.
As of this date, April 3, 2021 almost 20 years later according to the NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the 2753 people who died in the attacks only 1632 or 59 percent have been identified leaving approximately 1121 individuals still Missing.
Our goal is to create a renewed awareness of this tragedy and establish a 911 MONUMENT OF THE MISSING.
History reminds us that there always must be a messenger, the one who steps outside the boundaries of conformity to bring attention to a cause.
-Randolph Leidl