NO ORDINARY DEVELOPMENT
NY TIMES EDITORIAL 4/22
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/opinion/22sat2.html?th&emc=th
Top Security Advisor Says WTC Memorial Vulnerable To Terrorism
NY1NEWS 4/22
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=8&aid=58812
MIKE COMES CLEAN
NY POSTÂ EDITORIAL 4/22
The New York Times has revealed that the LMDC has been in possession of a letter from Governor Pataki’s senior advisor for counterterrorism that concluded that the design of the memorial leaves it vulnerable to a terrorist attack. This letter was sent to Stefan Pryor and John Cahill on 3/3. In a perfect example of what the LMDC perceives as its open and democratic process this letter was not even shared with the WTC Memorial Foundation until over a month later on 4/5.
This letter raises many of the same safety and security issues that we have been highlighting over the past few months. The letter also calls on the architects to consider revising several critical aspects of the memorial.
Even though we are concerned with the content of this letter we are even more concerned about what the LMDC did with this information.
Even though Mr. Pryor had this letter in his possession he never mentioned it when questioned at the 3/29 City Council Hearing about all safety and security issues.
Even when the senior executives of the WTC Memorial Foundation received the letter on 4/5 they did not let the public or the families know. So much for the open process!
Not only was this information withheld from the public and the families but it was withheld from the City Council.
Just a few weeks ago the LMDC withheld information about the first of the remains found at 130 Liberty for 5 days.
Our request to know where the debris from the Deutche Bank building is being sent has also been unanswered.
Our inquiry as to how the LMDC can continue to proceed when they appear to be in violation of the Urban Development Corporation Act 174/68 has also gone unanswered.
The LMDC continues to make its own rules and operates behind closed doors, keeping the public and the families out of important decisions.
We cannot allow this to continue.
Our elected officials should not allow them to continue because they are being kept in the dark as well.
As you all know yesterday was the 11th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, although you would never have known it with the limited press coverage. The good thing though was that the people in Oklahoma City had a place to go to remember those who were lost. A simple above ground memorial with a chair representing each of the victims. A memorial that they were able to visit at any hour of the day yesterday. A memorial where the names of those killed can be easily accessed in the light of day.Â
Let’s fast forward to the eleventh anniversary of the attacks of 9/11. Let’s assume that the LMDC gets it way and builds to the current plans. This is a bit of a fantasy so we will also imagine that they raise the 1.2 Billion they will need to build and maintain it.Â
A 9/11 family member decides to go to Ground Zero to honor their lost loved one. As they approach the site the only thing they see are two huge voids filled with water. A little confused they ask for directions from someone walking by. For this story we will call him Stefan. Stefan explains that first they will need to buy a ticket and points to a line of people mostly tourists that stretches almost as long as the original towers. Stefan continues after you get your ticket you will have to wait on that other line, which happens to be longer than the first. Stefan explains that the line is so long because everyone needs to pass through a metal detector before they will be allowed to travel down one ramp 3.5 stories underground into a confined space. If they are able to get to the chart on the wall which indicates where the name appears they might be able to get a glimpse of the name before they are ushered out with the hundreds of other people in order to allow the thousands waiting on line to get in. After thanking Stefan for all of his help the family member calculates that even if they waited on both lines they probably would not even get close to the memorial before it closes. Even if it were opened 24 hours, which it is not, by the time they got to the actual memorial it would already be 9/12. Feeling disgusted and betrayed that this memorial was allowed to be built the family member hops back on the Staten Island Ferry and visits Angel’s Circle to say a little prayer at a memorial that was built out of love and compassion. Something they could not find at Ground Zero. Â
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| No end to cruel postscript
NY. Daily News April 19, 2006 |
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“April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote, and never has he been more right than now. Over the last few weeks, the growing tally of human remains found atop a building next to Ground Zero has sharpened the pain and grief of 9/11 families.More than 500 unidentified remains have been found recently, 4-1/2 years since that awful day. The grisly fact is so disturbing, so cruel, that you don’t have to be a family member to be outraged. How could it be that the remains - mostly small bone fragments found on the roof of the Deutsche Bank building - were not found before? Will more remains be found in that building? In others? The answers, like the explanations for everything that has gone maddeningly wrong at Ground Zero, are both complex and simple. The complex part involves a tangle of recovery techniques, jurisdictions and ownership of the building, along with stringent environmental rules for searching contaminated sites. The simple part, paradoxically, is harder to explain. Although the Fire Department says it searched the building, just south of Ground Zero, seven or eight times in the days and months after the terror attack, somebody dropped the ball since then. The glaring lapse is evident in the fact that officials concede they anticipated finding remains as they readied the building for demolition. The casualness boggles the mind: If it was assumed remains could be there, why was red tape allowed to prevent earlier and more detailed searches? The delay is especially galling because the remains might have been used to identify victims before weather eliminated usable DNA. No remains have been identified for 1,151 of the 2,749 who died there that day. Perhaps some families would have had something to bury had the site been searched sooner. “This is savage and barbaric,” said Sally Regenhard, who lost her firefighter son Christian on 9/11. “The torture seems to be never-ending.” Family members are not unified, but Regenhard, in conjunction with several 9/11 groups, yesterday called on Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg to turn the issue of remains over to a military forensic team. Earlier, she blasted the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. as lacking competence and said she wants control of Ground Zero given to Washington. LMDC President Stefan Pryor said his agency was designed for rebuilding and was never part of the recovery effort. He said that before the state-city agency bought the Deutsche Bank building in August 2004, for $90 million, it had no role or access. Since buying the building, he said, it initiated protocols if remains are found and has begun sifting through roof gravel in a delicate search. At the request of families, there is a fire official and an anthropologist at the site. “We’ve had to jump through many, many hoops to get to this point,” Pryor told me. “We are now at the point where all this is legally and physically possible and we are doing it the right way.” Don’t blame us, was Deutsche Bank’s response. Rohini Pragasam, a spokeswoman, said the bank was locked in a long dispute with its insurers and did find some remains after several searches conducted before it sold the building. Even worse, Pryor suggests more remains are waiting to be found. “We are told there are locations where it is possible there will be others,” he said, citing the building’s cooling towers. Thus, the nightmare continues. How cruel. Originally published on April 19, 2006 |
To All,
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           They all went to work that day never realizing what was about to occur. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, unsuspecting and innocent. Unfortunately this brings most of us back to that tragic day in September but the day I refer to did not occur on a morning in September but on an April day ten years ago.
           On April 19, 1995 168 people including 19 children were killed when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed.
           Please keep them in your prayers and in your thoughts as they are the forgotten victims. Victims of terror from within our own borders. Victims that will become statistics, unless we keep their memories alive. I ask all of you that prior to this past week when the papers began to run stories how many of us even thought about Oklahoma City and the tragedy that befell them 11 years ago.
           This will be the fate of our loved ones as well if we allow them to be forgotten. So please take a moment and say a prayer for
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Aleman, Lucio Jr., 33, Oklahoma City.
Alexander, Teresa, 33, Oklahoma City.
Allen, Richard A., 46, Oklahoma City.
Allen, Ted L., 48, Norman.
Almon, Baylee, 1, Oklahoma City.
Althouse, Diane E. Hollingsworth, 45, Edmond.
Anderson, Rebecca, 37, Midwest City.
Argo, Pamela, 36, Oklahoma City.
Avery, Saundra “Sandy”, 34, Midwest City.
Avillanoza, Peter, 56, Oklahoma City.
Battle, Calvin, 62, Oklahoma City.
Battle, Peola, 56, Oklahoma City.
Bell, Danielle, 15 months, Oklahoma City.
Biddy, Oleta, 54, Tuttle.
Bland, Shelly Turner, 25, Tuttle.
Blanton, Andrea, 33, Oklahoma City.
Bloomer, Olen B., 61, Moore.
Bolden, Army Sgt. 1st Class Lola Rene, 40, Birmingham, Ala.
Boles, James E., 50, Oklahoma City.
Bolte, Mark A., 28, Oklahoma City.
Booker, Casandra, 25, Oklahoma City.
Bowers, Carol, 53, Yukon.
Bradley, Peachlyn, 3, Oklahoma City.
Brady, Woodrow, 41, Oklahoma City.
Brown, Cynthia Campbell, 26, Oklahoma City.
Broxterman, Paul G., 42, Edmond.
Bruce, Gabreon, 3 months, Oklahoma City.
Burgess, Kimberly Ruth, 29, Oklahoma City.
Burkett, David N., 47, Oklahoma City.
Burns, Donald E., 63, Oklahoma City.
Carr, Karen Gist, 32, Midwest City.
Carrillo, Michael J., 44, Oklahoma City.
Chafey, Rona, 35, Oklahoma City.
Chavez, Zackary, 3, Oklahoma City.
Sharon Chesnut, 47, Oklahoma City.
Chipman, Robert, 51, Edmond.
Clark, Kimberly K., 39, Oklahoma City.
Clark, Margaret L. “Peggy”, 42, Chickasha.
Cooper, Antonio A. Jr., 6 months, Midwest City.
Cooper, Anthony Christopher II, 2, Moore.
Cooper, Dana L. Brown, 24, Moore.
Cottingham, Harley, 46, Oklahoma City.
Cousins, Kim R., 33, Midwest City.
Coverdale, Aaron, 5 1/2, Oklahoma City.
Coverdale, Elijah, 2 1/2, Oklahoma City.
Coyne, Jaci, 14 months, Moore.
Cregan, Katherine, 60, Oklahoma City.
Cummins, Richard, 55, Mustang.
Curry, Steven, 44, Norman.
Daniels, Brenda, 42, Oklahoma City.
Davis, Sgt. Benjamin L., 29, Edmond.
Day, Diana Lynn, 38, Oklahoma City.
DeMaster, Peter, 44, Oklahoma City.
Deveroux, Castine, 49, Oklahoma City.
Driver, Sheila, 28, Oklahoma City.
Eaves, Tylor, 8 months, Midwest City.
Eckles, Ashley, 4, Guthrie.
Ferrell, Susan, 37, Oklahoma City.
Fields, Carrol “Chip,” 48, Guthrie.
Finley, Katherine Ann, 44, Yukon.
Fisher, Judy J., 45, Oklahoma City.
Florence, Linda, 43, Oklahoma City.
Fritzler, Donald, 64, Oklahoma City.
Fritzler, Mary Anne, 57, Oklahoma City.
Garrett, Tevin, 16 months, Midwest City.
Garrison, Laura Jane, 61, Oklahoma City.
Genzer, Jamie, 32, Wellston.
Goodson, Margaret, 54, Oklahoma City.
Gottshall, Kevin Lee, 6 months, Norman.
Griffin, Ethel Louise, 55, Edmond.
Guiles, Colleen, 59, Oklahoma City.
Guzman, Marine Capt. Randolph, 28, Castro Valley, Calif..
Hagerman, Crystal, 20, Dallas, Texas
Hammons, Cheryl, 44, Oklahoma City.
Harding, Ronald, 55, Oklahoma City.
Hawthorne, Thomas, 52, Choctaw.
Higginbottom, Doris Adele, 44, Oklahoma City.
Hightower, Anita C., 27, Oklahoma City.
Hodges, Thompson E. “Gene,” 54, Norman.
Holland, Peggy Louise, 37, Oklahoma City.
Housley, Linda Coleen, 53, Oklahoma City.
Howard, George M., 45, Vallejo, Calif..
Howell, Wanda, 34, Spencer.
Huff, Robbin A., 37, Bethany.
Hurlburt, Anna Jean, 67, Oklahoma City.
Hurlburt, Charles, 73, Oklahoma City.
Ice, Paul D., 42, Midwest City.
Jenkins, Christi Y., 32, Edmond.
Johnson, Norma Jean, 62, Oklahoma City.
Johnson, Raymond L., 59, Oklahoma City.
Jones, Larry J., 46, Yukon.
Justes, Alvin, 54, Oklahoma City.
Kennedy, Blake R., 1 1/2, Amber.
Khalil, Carole, 50, Oklahoma City.
Koelsch, Valerie, 33, Oklahoma City.
Kreymborg, Carolyn A., 57, Oklahoma City.
Lauderdale, Teresa L., 41, Shawnee.
Leinen, Catherine, 47, Oklahoma City.
Lenz, Carrie, 26, Choctaw.
Leonard, Donald R., 50, Edmond.
Levy, Airman 1st Class Lakesha R., 21, Midwest City.
London, Dominique, 2, Oklahoma City.
Long, Rheta, 60, Oklahoma City.
Loudenslager, Michael, 48, Harrah.
Luster, Aurelia “Donna,” 43, Guthrie.
Luster, Robert, 45, Guthrie.
Maroney, Mickey, 50, Oklahoma City.
Martin, James K., 34, Oklahoma City.
Martinez, Gilberto, 35, Oklahoma City.
Mathes-Worton, Tresia, 28, Oklahoma City.
McCarthy, James Anthony, 53, Edmond.
McCullough, Kenneth, 36, Edmond.
McGonnell, Betsy J. Beebe, 47, Norman.
McKinney, Linda G., 47, Oklahoma City.
McRaven, Airman 1st Class Cartney J. Koch, 19, Midwest City.
Medearis, Claude, 41, Norman.
Meek, Claudette, 43, Oklahoma City.
Merrell, Frankie Ann, 23, Oklahoma City.
Miller, Derwin, 27, Oklahoma City.
Mitchell, Eula Leigh, 64, Oklahoma City.
Moss, John C. III., 50, Oklahoma City.
Nix, Patricia, 47, Edmond.
Parker, Jerry Lee, 45, Norman.
Randolph, Jill, 27, Oklahoma City.
Reeder, Michelle Ann, 33, Oklahoma City.
Rees, Terry Smith 41, Midwest City.
Rentie, Mary Leasure, 39, Bethany.
Reyes, Antonio, 55, Edmond.
Ridley, Kathryn, 24, Oklahoma City.
Rigney, Trudy, 31, Midwest City.
Ritter, Claudine, 48, Oklahoma City.
Rosas, Christy, 22, Moore.
Sanders, Sonja, 27, Moore.
Scroggins, Lanny L., 46, Yukon.
Seidl, Kathy L., 39, Bethel.
Sells, Leora L., 57, Oklahoma City.
Shepherd, Karan D., 27, Moore.
Smith, Chase, 3, Oklahoma City.
Smith, Colton, 2, Oklahoma City.
Sohn, Army Sgt. 1st Class Victoria, 36, Moore.
Stewart, John T., 51, Oklahoma City.
Stratton, Dolores M., 51, Moore.
Tapia, Emilio, 50, Oklahoma City.
Texter, Victoria, 37, Oklahoma City.
Thomas, Charlotte A., 43, Oklahoma City.
Thompson, Michael, 47, Yukon.
Thompson, Virginia, 56, El Reno.
Titsworth, Kayla M., 3 1/2, Lawton.
Tomlin, Ricky L., 46, Piedmont.
Treanor, LaRue, 55, Guthrie.
Treanor, Luther, 61, Guthrie.
Turner, Larry L., 42, Oklahoma City.
Valdez, Jules A., 51, Edmond.
VanEss, John K., 67, Chickasha.
Wade, Johnny A., 42, Edmond.
Walker, David J., 54, Edmond.
Walker, Robert N., 52, Oklahoma City.
Watkins, Wanda L., 49, Oklahoma City.
Weaver, Michael, 54, Edmond.
Welch, Julie, 23, Oklahoma City.
Westberry, Robert, 57, Oklahoma City.
Whicher, Alan, 40, Edmond.
Whittenberg, Jo Ann, 35, Oklahoma City.
Williams, Frances A., 48, Oklahoma City.
Williams, Scott, 24, Tuttle.
Williams, William Stephen, 42, Cashion.
Wilson, Clarence, Sr., 49, Oklahoma.
Woodbridge, Ronota A., 31, Edmond.
Youngblood, John A., 52, Yukon.
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 And remember what Lois McMaster Bujold said
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 “The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them�.
 Let us to continue to be their voice.
 “Lest We Forget�
Dykstra’s failure to honor a single soul to date and her absurd focus on the workplace disaster site disgraces the memory of all who died there.
The people murdered at Ground Zero would not want their children returning to a crash site where a grotesque amount of money was invested to remind them of the violence that took their lives.
How about an understated, reverent and majestic monument that honors how these people lived?
Tish Ferguson
Point Pleasant, N.J.
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There’s nothing surprising about people wanting to start the World Trade Center rebuilding process over with better plans, since Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg have only allowed bad plans to be considered in the official process.
According to the official public poll, neither of the proposed two finalist plans was clearly fit to be a winner.
Louis Epstein
Carmel
Below please find the link to an Op Ed by Tom Johnson referring to an article printed in the NY Post. Here Is my question to Mr. Johnson. He states that and I quote from his letter “No such discussion or criticism from board members has ever taken place at a foundation board meeting.” My question is did any such discussion or criticism from board members ever take place. No where in the article does it state that theses criticisms took place in a Board Meeting.(SEE SECOND LINK)
I am sorry but it appears that Mr.Johnson too carefully worded his response. I also remember him being quoted in the New York Daily News saying that there are only about 12 family members that opposed the current underground memorial. This was stated when we already had over 1,000 family members on our petition.
It appears that he too often speaks for the LMDC and not for the families.
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http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/letters/67107
Below is the article that Johnson refers to
City: 456 WTC bone fragments found
BY LUIS PEREZ
April 18, 2006
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http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/am-wtc0418,0,509291.story?coll=ny-nycnews-headlines
Workers continue to recover remains
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