SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

[DMCKEON]

Six remains were recovered yesterday and unfortunately we no longer seem surprised.

Almost every day for the last six months there seems to be at least one remain recovered.

And now they say they have completed the excavation under West Street and have another 2,700 cubic yards of what they call debris to sift through.

We are not even sure how much is left from the Haul Road and have gotten almost no updates from the area of the Greek Orthodox Church.

God knows if they will ever get to Fitterman Hall or all of the other manholes and conduits that they have promised to search.

You must remember that we have never seen a plan so we can’t really tell.

They finished West Street 2 weeks early. Two weeks early according to what schedule. It was not part of the new search and we were never informed of the extent of the excavation so like the original search they can say it is complete just about whenever they want.

There was something interesting about yesterday’s recovery. 2 of the remains came from the roof of 130 Cedar.

Back on 10/27/06 the Mayor told us that this was going to be one of the 4 rooftops that were going to be searched.

According to their experts the other roofs surrounding Ground Zero were somehow magically protected from anything from the collapse of the towers.

That is a story for another day.

What is interesting about yesterday is that it is over 6 months since they said they were going to search these roofs.

We were also told months ago that these roofs had been searched.

Why are they now six months later finding remains on these roofs?

Are they conducting another search?

Were we misinformed and these roofs were not searched as the Mayor had promised on October 27?

The bottom line is we can never tell.

There is still no plan and we never know where and when locations are scheduled to start or finish.

It is the same with the identification of the remains.

We have asked numerous times but we still don’t know:

If all of the original unidentified remains have been tested

If all of the original unidentified remains have been retested with the new process.

How many of the newly recovered remains have been tested

We have also not been made aware of any personal items found during the new search.

It seems hard to believe that over 1,300 human remains have been found but not one personal item.

I guess it’s really not that hard to believe since we are also supposed to believe that one ID has been made from over 1,300 remains.

The fact of the matter is that they will continue to do a haphazard search.

They will continue to mix results from the new search and the old search.

And will continue to keep us in the dark.

Some things never change.

Put It Above Ground