Connecticut Delegation’s Reflect on Ground Zero
WASHINGTON – Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-3rd) and James H. Maloney (D-5th) were among a group of ten members of Congress who visited the remains of the World Trade Center on Wednesday to pay respects to the 100 Connecticut victims of the attack and thank workers for their rescue and recovery efforts.
“It’s really staggering” DeLauro said after returning from what has become known as Ground Zero. She said members of the Army Corp of Engineers took her around the “steel skin” of the World Trade Center. “There were no chairs, no tables, no carpets, no computers, nothing. What was left was steel and pulverized concrete.”
The image that DeLauro said stuck most in her mind was the memorial wall for the victims of the attacks on which families had put up pictures of their loved ones who are missing or dead. She said there were, “little notes on the sides that say, ‘if you’ve seen my daughter, tell her to call home.’
“All the times you think about these tragedies, you look at a series of numbersáBut when you begin to see people in pictures and you see the handwritten notes, the thing becomes very real,” she said.
Maloney said, “The image that comes to me is if you take a wad of paper–stack of paper–and put it through a paper shredder, it produces these long, thin strips of paper, and then you can mound it upáinstead of being little pieces of paper, the strips are steel girders three feet thick and 20 or 30 feet long, which are just bent and twisted in all kinds of directions.”
Maloney said that there was a strange smell in the air at Ground Zero that he described as the mixture of smoke and concrete dust. “It is quite a horrific smell that goes with the horrific vision of this pile of metal girders that are collapsed.”
DeLauro said that even though people are tired, they are determined to rebuild New York. “I think the best word is resolute because this is not going to keep New York down. New Yorkers are up,” she said.
As Maloney walked through the area, he said he talked to federal officials who described the anger that followed the attacks. “That has cooled to a very hard and steady sense of determination to move on from that, rebuild the city, find and hold those responsible.”
DeLauro and Maloney both had the opportunity to meet with and thank Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Governor George E. Pataki.
Maloney and DeLauro both said they have spoken with dozens of families in their district who lost family members in the attack.
