City rises from ruin

Two weeks after the bombing at the World Trade Center, rescue crews have worked their way through just one-tenth of the ruins.

The Army Corps of Engineers estimates that 1.2 million tonnes of steel, concrete and glass remain of the 100-storey twin towers.

Less than a 10th - 115,756 tonnes - had been removed from the site by yesterday.

The number of bodies recovered from the still-burning wreckage has risen by 13 to 300, but only 232 have been identified. The number of people missing remains at 6347.

With hope all but gone of finding anyone alive, more than 70 lawyers have begun helping families of the missing to apply for death certificates so they can collect insurance benefits and workers' compensation and gain access to bank accounts.

People hoping to photograph the wreckage have been warned that cameras and video equipment are forbidden and could be confiscated. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani issued the order this week, saying the site is a crime scene.

At the ruins, crews continue to dismantle one of the most striking symbols of the disaster, two jagged sections of steel roughly 15 storeys tall. Some pieces are being preserved for a possible memorial.

"It's real slow because whenever we find a body part, we've got to stop and let them come in and investigate further," said Wayne Fallon, a heavy equipment engineer.

New Yorkers moved a step closer to choosing a new mayor for their wounded city after polling singled out two Democrat candidates to face each other in a run-off in two weeks and one Republican - financial news magnate Michael Bloomberg - to compete in the general election in November.

The normal hoopla of city politics was totally absent as the results from the primaries flowed in.

But much more unsettling for all the successful candidates, however, was the still-looming prospect that Mr Giuliani might seek to circumvent term-limit laws to stay in office.

Indeed, exit polling suggested that were he to find a way to duck those laws and then fight in the election on November 6, the mayor, a Republican, would coast to victory and be elected to a third four-year term.

The city has overflowed with praise for him in the days since the tragedy, when he has shown what some have called "Churchillian" leadership and compassion.

Yesterday, he outlined tough restrictions on cars entering Manhattan, citing security reasons and a need to ease traffic jams as police check drivers' identifications and search many vehicles.





Everywhere in New York there are still signs of damage, in the hotels, the shops, even the streets. Many small- and medium-sized businesses will go under.

But there is also evidence of extraordinary resilience.

The Wall Street area has lost 40 per cent of its office space. Yet the businesses are functioning, moving to midtown or out to the suburbs.

The downtown infrastructure is being hooked up with astonishing speed. The dusty streets are strewn with cables and generators.

Verizon, the main (and hitherto somewhat unloved) New York phone company, has become something of a local hero, with its free public phone calls and portable public mobile phone booths.

Crucially, the banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions may have taken a physical beating, but as businesses they are functioning fine.

The immediate, obvious response to the attacks has been a blaze of patriotism. The flags are everywhere: in shop windows, on T-shirts, on the aerials of cars, on backpacks, on lapel badges.

And this is cynical, wisecracking New York, not the suburbs with the flagpoles on the lawn.

New Yorkers themselves are amazed; they have never seen anything like it.

They are accustomed, when they travel around the rest of the country, to being treated with a certain coolness. Now they are feted as heroes, which, of course, many of them are.

The heroes of today are not the pampered stars of Hollywood, nor the investment bankers, still less the dotcom ex-millionaires.

They are the firefighters and the police officers, the office workers who shepherded their colleagues down the fire escapes.

- INDEPENDENT

Full coverage: Terror in America

Pictures: Day 1 | Day 2 | Brooklyn Bridge live webcam

Video

The fatal flights

Emergency telephone numbers:

United Airlines: 0168 1800 932 8555

American Airlines: 0168 1800 245 0999

NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade: 0800 872 111

US Embassy in Wellington (recorded info): 04 472 2068