FBI, police seek evidence in debris

By DONNA DE LA CRUZ and RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press Writers

NEW YORK – Atop the tallest man-made hill on the Eastern seaboard, miles from the devastation of the World Trade Center, hundreds of FBI agents, experts and volunteers sift through debris from the towers in search of evidence.

For six days, a round-the-clock parade of heavy-duty dump trucks loaded with wreckage and flatbed trailers carrying twisted steel beams has crossed the Verrazano Bridge, turned off Route 440 and chugged up the incline to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island.

``It's the ideal site to sift through the material,'' Kevin Farrell, the city's sanitation commissioner, said Tuesday.

His agency used the 3,000-acre dump for 53 years until it was officially closed last March – much to the relief of nearby residents.

Fresh Kills, its inapt name taken from the Dutch words for fresh stream, opened in 1948 as a ``temporary'' site. The dump took in 2 billion tons of refuse over its lifetime, growing to three times the size of Central Park. A 200-foot-high ridge runs down the middle of the dump.

Months after closing, Fresh Kills is back in business. Behind tight security, 800 workers from city police and fire departments, the FBI, Secret Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, National Guard and outside volunteers work 12-hour shifts. Seagulls wheel over a newly erected tent city.

As of Tuesday, 45,000 tons of debris sorted at Fresh Kills had yielded 256 body parts, many personal belongings and ``several'' knives and box cutters, officials said. It was not known whether these were the weapons used by the hijackers to take over the two aircraft that hit the twin towers.

Still unaccounted for were the FBI's top priorities: four orange-painted flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the Boeing 767s that caused both 110-story skyscrapers to collapse.

Body parts are photographed, tagged and stored in refrigerated trucks. Airplane parts are set aside, as are personal items police hope to return to their owners or their families.

``It's gruesome work, it's depressing,'' said police Lt. Ray Sheehan, a crime scene expert.

Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said many ex-cops volunteered to help sift the wreckage, among them a retired detective seeking something belonging to his son-in-law, missing in the disaster.

``It's a very emotional process,'' Kerik said.

No part has been more painful than the retrieval of 10 ladder trucks, five fire engines and several support vehicles, battered reminders of the nearly 300 firefighters who perished, most of them buried when the first tower collapsed.

Firefighters' jackets, helmets and other effects were stored in one tent, which was being treated as a shrine, said fire Lt. Peter Cassidy of Linden, N.J.

Scores of other vehicles caught under the falling debris formed a bizarre junkyard – utility trucks, private cars and some with ``official'' license plates, possibly the remains of the Secret Service fleet housed in a basement garage.

A 10-foot by 15-foot American flag with the notation ``130 Liberty Plaza,'' a building across the street from the Trade Center, flew overhead as a tribute.