Tag Archives: WTC

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Judge to mull if airlines owe WTC owners over 9/11

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A judge who has presided over most of the litigation stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks will decide whether the owners of the World Trade Center can try to make aviation companies pay billions of dollars in damages.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said he will announce his decision immediately after hearing several witnesses and listening to arguments in a nonjury trial starting Monday and expected to last three days.

The trial will decide whether World Trade Center Properties and its affiliates can receive more than the $4.9 billion in insurance proceeds they have already recovered since the 9/11 attacks by terrorists who hijacked commercial airliners and flew them into the 110-story twin towers. The attacks led to the destruction of the towers as well as a third trade center building.

If the judge should decide that the World Trade Center owners were entitled to additional money, a liability trial might occur. The defendants include American Airlines Inc., AMR Corp., United Airlines Inc., US Airways Inc., Colgan Air Inc., Boeing Co. and the Massachusetts Port Authority, among others.

The airlines and other aviation-related companies were sued with the reasoning that they were negligent, allowing terrorists to board airplanes and overtake their crews before plunging the planes into the trade center complex, destroying three buildings.

Hellerstein has already said the maximum the trade center owners could recover from aviation defendants would be $3.5 billion. The trade center owners say it has cost more than $7 billion to replace the twin towers and more than $1 billion to replace the third trade center building that fell.

In court papers, both sides have accused the other of unfairly characterizing their claims, with the aviation defendants saying the trade center owners were being “absurd” and the complex’s owners labeling some of the aviation defendants’ arguments as “nonsense.”

The aviation defendants say Hellerstein should conclude that the trade center owners are entitled to no award because they’ve already been reimbursed by insurance companies for the same damage they are trying to force aviation defendants to pay for as well. They also note that the replacement buildings are more modern and fancy than the original buildings.

Of the 7 World Trade Center building — the first to be rebuilt after the attacks — the lawyers wrote that the trade center owners “built a new, state of the art …read more

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More possible human remains found in WTC debris

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The New York City medical examiner’s office says more possible pieces of human remains have been found during the sifting of newly uncovered debris from the site of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

The office says 21 potential human remains were recovered Wednesday. That brings the total found during the current effort to 39.

About 60 truckloads of debris that could contain tiny human bone fragments have been unearthed by construction crews working on the new World Trade Center tower in recent years. City officials say investigators will spend 10 weeks trying to find remains in that debris. The city’s last such effort ended in 2010.

Some 2,750 people died at the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11 attacks, but remains of only 1,634 people have been identified.

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Sifting of WTC debris for Sept. 11 remains begins

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The New York City medical examiner says it has started sifting construction debris from the World Trade Center site in an effort to find any human remains from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The work began Monday. It’s expected to continue for about 10 weeks on Staten Island.

Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said in a memo Friday that DNA testing will continue until every possible identification can be made.

City officials say about 60 truckloads of construction debris have been collected around the site over the past 2½ years. A skyscraper will replace the twin towers.

Some 2,750 people died at the World Trade Center in the 2001 attacks. So far, 1,634 people have been identified.

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WTC debris will be sifted for Sept. 11 remains

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Construction debris from the World Trade Center site will be sifted for any human remains from the 9/11 terrorist attacks starting Monday.

Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said in a memo Friday that DNA testing will continue until every possible identification can be made. The sifting is expected to continue for about 10 weeks on Staten Island.

City officials say about 60 truckloads of construction debris have been collected around the site over the past 2½ years. A skyscraper will replace the twin towers.

Some 2,750 people died at the World Trade Center in the 2001 attacks. So far, 1,634 people have been identified.

The chief medical examiner’s office is leading the operation. It has identified 34 victims and 2,345 possible human remains of previously identified victims since 2006.

…read more
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Terrorist serving life for role in 1993 WTC bombing reportedly sues to end solitary

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A convicted terrorist serving life with no parole plus 240 years for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing has reportedly filed a lawsuit arguing he should be let out of solitary confinement.

The Los Angeles Times reports Ramzi Yousef is hoping he can persuade a judge to end his nearly 24-hour solitary confinement at a Colorado prison known as the “Fortress in the Rockies.”

“I request an immediate end to my solitary confinement and ask to be in a unit in an open prison environment where inmates are allowed outside their cells for no less than 14 hours a day,” he reportedly wrote in confidential government records obtained by The Los Angeles Times. “I have been in solitary confinement in the U.S. since Feb. 8, 1995, with no end in sight…. I further ask not to be in handcuffs or leg irons when moved outside my cell.”

Yousef reportedly claims his due process under the law is being violated because he has no chance to get out of solitary confinement despite 15 years of good behavior in prison. The lawsuit reportedly claims his time in solitary confinement has led to “severe psychological trauma.”

Yousef was convicted of masterminding the February 1993 bombing, which killed six and injured more than 1,000. He was also convicted of trying to kill Pope John Paul II and President Clinton, and plotting to bomb planes.

His terror acts were funded by Al Qaeda and his uncleKhalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is allegedly the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Click for more from The Los Angeles Times.

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Tozzoli, who led World Trade Center team, dies

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Guy Tozzoli, an official with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who supervised the development of New York City’s original World Trade Center and then witnessed its destruction, has died at age 90.

Tozzoli died Saturday in Myrtle Beach, S.C. His death was announced by the World Trade Centers Association, an organization dedicated to furthering global trade that he founded in 1970 and led for four decades.

As director of World Trade Center Development for the Port Authority in the 1960s, Tozzoli oversaw the design and construction of the 110-story towers that were the world’s tallest buildings from their dedication in 1973 until the terrorist attack that felled them.

Tozzoli was credited with bringing Japanese architect Minoru Yamasaki to the project. He also fought for the famous Windows on the World restaurant to be included in the north tower, and it was his idea to use the dirt excavated for the trade center as landfill to build Battery Park City.

Current Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye called Tozzoli a groundbreaking pioneer.

“His dedication to the WTC site was instrumental in fostering world trade and economic development as a critical part of the Port Authority‘s mission to create jobs and stimulate economic activity for the region,” Foye said.

Tozzoli joined the Port Authority in 1946 and spent his entire career there except for two years of military service during the Korean War. In the 1950s, he helped design the world’s first container port in Newark, N.J.

Tozzoli was given the task of planning and building the World Trade Center in 1962. He coordinated construction of the massive project and then focused on leasing it.

“It will be a city with a working population of 50,000 and a landmark that will attract 80,000 visitors daily,” Tozzoli said in an interview during that time. “The center’s 10 million square feet of space will make it larger than Rockefeller Center. And it’s going to mean a worldwide selling job on our part to get tenants to occupy it.”

Tozzoli retired from the Port Authority in 1986 but maintained an office at the trade center, where the agency was headquartered. He spent three hours trapped in a staircase when terrorists set off a truck bomb in 1993.

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WTC workers scrawl graffiti of defiance, hope

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On most construction projects, workers are discouraged from signing or otherwise scrawling on the iron and concrete. At the skyscraper rising at ground zero, though, they’re being invited to leave messages for the ages.

“Freedom Forever. WTC 9/11″ is scrawled on a beam near the top of the gleaming, 104-story One World Trade Center. “Change is from within” is on a beam on the roof. Another reads: “God Bless the workers & inhabitants of this bldg.”

One of the last pieces of steel hoisted up last year sits near a precarious edge. The message on it reads: “We remember. We rebuild. We come back stronger!” It is signed by a visitor to the site last year — President Barack Obama.

The words on beams, walls and stairwells of the skyscraper that replaces the twin towers lost on Sept. 11, 2001, form the graffiti of defiance and rebirth, what ironworker supervisor Kevin Murphy calls “things from the heart.” They’re remembrances of the 2,700 people who died, and testaments to the hope that rose from a shattered morning.

“This is not just any construction site, this is a special place for these guys,” says Murphy of the 1,000 men and some women who work in the building at any given time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“Everyone here wants to be here, they want to put this building up,” Murphy says. “They’re part of the redemption.”

On a frigid, windy winter day, with the 9/11 memorial fountain straight below and the Statue of Liberty in the distance, Murphy supervised a crew of men guiding the first piece of the steel spire that will top out the building at a dizzying 1,776 feet — the tallest in the Western Hemisphere.

In the rooftop iron scaffolding for the spire, 105 floors up, a beam pays homage to Lillian Frederick, a 46-year-old administrative assistant who died on the 105th floor of the south tower, pierced by a terrorist-hijacked airliner.

A popular Spanish phrase is penned next to two names on one concrete pillar: “Te Amo Tres Metros Sobre el Cielo,” meaning, “I love you three steps above heaven.”

Some beams are almost completely covered in a spaghetti-like jumble of doodled hearts and flowers, loopy cursives and blaring capitals. Many want to simply mark their presence: “Henry Wynn/Plumbers Local (hash)1/Sheepshead Bay/Never Forget!”

Families of victims invited to go up left names and comments too, as did firefighters and police officers who were first responders. “R.I.P. Fanny Espinoza, 9-11-01″ reads a typical remembrance signed by several family members of a Cantor-Fitzgerald employee.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote: “With you in spirit — those who perished, those who fought, those who build.”

Time and daily routines have softened the communal grief as the workers carry on, trading jokes and gruff male banter. Some ends up in whimsical graffiti marking World Cup soccer matches, New York Giants Super Bowl victories and other less-weighty matters that have gone on since construction began six years ago. One crudely drawn map of the neighborhood down below shows the location of a popular strip club.

People on the ground below will never see the spontaneous private thoughts high in the Manhattan sky. The graffiti will disappear as the raw basic structure is covered with drywall, ceiling panels and paint for tenants moving into the 3 million square feet of office space by 2014.

Knowing this, workers and visitors often take photographs of special bits of graffiti, so the words will live on.

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Follow Verena Dobnik at http://www.twitter.com/VerenaChirps

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Cranes install base of spire at 1 WTC

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Workers using two giant cranes on the 104th floor roof of 1 World Trade Center have installed the first piece of the spire that will make it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

The nearly 70-ton piece was brought to Manhattan last month by barge. It’s the heaviest of 18 parts of the spire that will complete the 1,776-foot skyscraper symbolizing America’s freedom.

Dozens of construction workers were on hand Tuesday as the massive, round piece of steel slowly descended into its socket.

Below, there’s a view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

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