Hours after two airplanes hit the World Trade Center on the
morning of September 11, 2001, Charlie Vitchers, a
construction superintendent, and Bobby Gray, a crane
operator, headed downtown. They knew their skills would be
crucial amid the chaos and destruction after the towers fell.
What they could not imagine -- and what they would soon
discover -- was the enormity of the task at Ground Zero.
Four hundred million pounds of steel; 600,000 square feet of
broken glass; and 2,700 vertical feet of building had been
reduced to a pile of burning debris covering sixteen acres.
Charlie, Bobby, and hundreds of other construction workers,
many of whom had helped to build the Twin Towers, were the
only ones qualified to safely handle the devastation.
Everyone working the site faced the looming danger of the
collapse of the slurry wall protecting lower Manhattan from
the waters of the Hudson River, the complexity of shifting
tons of steel without losing additional lives, and the
day-to-day challenge and emotional strain of recovering
victims. Charlie Vitchers became the go-to guy for the
hundreds of people and numerous agencies laboring to clean
up Ground Zero. What he and Bobby Gray make dramatically
evident is how the job of dismantling the remaining ruins
and restoring order to the site was far more complex and
dangerous than constructing the tallest buildings in the world.
With stunning full-color photographs donated by Joel
Meyerowitz -- a celebrated and award-winning artist and the
only non-newsroom photographer allowed access to the site --
and first-person oral accounts of the tragedy from the
morning of the attack to the Last Column ceremony, NINE
MONTHS AT GROUND ZERO is a harrowing but ultimately
redemptive story of forthright and heroic service.
Our Past Week of Fresh Picks
|
© 2003-2026