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Mar 10, 2008 5:40 am US/Eastern
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Workers Begin Relocating WTC Survivors' Staircase
Sole Surviving Segment Of Twin Towers To Be Stored
NEW YORK (AP) ―
A staircase that served as an escape route for thousands of survivors
of the World Trade Center attack and became an icon as it remained
standing amid the rubble was hoisted onto a truck Sunday and moved to a
temporary home.
After
the wreckage of the twin 110-story towers was removed, the stairway --
37 steps that once connected an exterior plaza to the street below—was
the only aboveground remnant of the complex.
Preservationists
and survivors of the attack have been battling to leave it in place to
honor the memory of the victims of the attack, while others said it
stood in the way of redevelopment.
On Sunday, the so-called
survivors' staircase was placed on a flatbed truck and moved 200 feet
to a spot near the northwest corner of the trade center site. It will
be a featured attraction of the World Trade Center memorial and museum
due to open on the 10th anniversary of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"In
many senses we're all survivors of 9/11 -- this city, this country,"
said Joe Daniels, president of the foundation that is building the
memorial. "And the staircase is a really potent symbol of that."
State
officials had announced in 2006 that all but one or two slabs of the
staircase would be demolished to make way for a new office tower being
built on the site.
After protests, officials in Gov. Eliot Spitzer's administration worked out the compromise last year to move the staircase.
On
Sunday, Sept. 11 survivors and representatives of the site's owner, the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and of the memorial
foundation and other organizations watched as workers planted an
American flag on the staircase and then hoisted it with a 500-ton
hydraulic crane.
Tom Canavan remembered using the stairs to
escape after tunneling out of debris that buried him when the World
Trade Center's south tower collapsed.
"Time seemed to move
very fast," Canavan said. "It took me about 20 minutes to tunnel out,
just digging. I had no fingernails left when I got to the top."
Avi
Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency
in charge of redeveloping the site, said moving the stairs was a good
compromise.
"You can honor memory, you can honor the day, you
can honor survival yet respect and understand the need for rebuilding
to go forward," he said.
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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