World Trade Center museum area flooded...some vehicle artifacts under water....so sad
Posted by
AquaRN on 11/3/2012, 9:03 am
This is a good site to see the progress of recovery. That is where I just found this recently posted article. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/28/nyregion/hurricane-sandy.html#9c1bde5da
4:35 pm
David W. Dunlap
Flooding Upsets Resumption of 9/11 Museum Construction
Flood waters from Hurricane Sandy have engulfed artifacts in the subterranean Foundation Hall of the National September 11 Memorial Museum.
The main floor of the National September 11 Memorial Museum, still under construction nearly 70 feet below the memorial plaza at the World Trade Center, filled with at least seven feet of water during the storm, its president said Friday. The flooding nearly immersed two fire trucks that have already been placed in the museum and it surrounded the symbolic last column taken from the twin towers.
"It was shocking," said Joseph C. Daniels, the president and chief executive of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which is responsible for both the museum and the memorial. He said he had gone to bed Monday believing the museum was safe. He awakened Tuesday to word that the site had flooded overnight. Later that day, he witnessed it himself from a balcony overlooking the enormous Foundation Hall on the main floor, now filled with thick, black water on which wood planks and other debris floated.
Four days earlier, Mr. Daniels had been standing in the hall with members of the memorial foundation board, showing them renderings and explaining which displays would go where. Construction was finally resuming on the museum after the resolution of a protracted financing dispute between the foundation, of which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is chairman, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is partly controlled by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The authority owns the World Trade Center site and is building the museum on behalf of the foundation.
The view from the balcony showed water reaching almost to the top of the fire truck used by Engine Company 21 to respond to the attack in 2001, and the truck on which Ladder Company 3 arrived. A Fire Department ambulance was also surrounded with water. All three had been shrink-wrapped in plastic before they were installed in the museum. With the floodwaters still standing, there was no way on Friday to assess how much additional damage the already battered vehicles had sustained, or whether the plastic enclosure had protected them.
The archipelago of partly submerged artifacts includes the last column of the original twin towers. This 58-ton piece, more than 36 feet high, was removed with funereal ceremony in May 2002 to symbolize the end of the first phase of recovery, the clearance of the World Trade Center site. It was then stored in a climate-controlled area of Hangar 17 at Kennedy International Airport while undergoing conservation. It is still in a climate-controlled enclosure, so its condition has not been assessed. Many of the personal effects that had been taped to the column were removed long ago for safekeeping. But the column is also covered in spray-painted graffiti from first responders, rescuers and recovery workers.
The last column, the steel cross, the damaged vehicles and the so-called survivors' stairway were all hoisted down into the subterranean museum during the early phases of construction. They could not have been moved in after the completion of the memorial plaza, which doubles as the museum rooftop.
Mr. Daniels said Friday that the pumping out of the museum was "fully under way," but that it was still far too early to say when construction might resume or, for that matter, when the 9/11 memorial might reopen to the public.
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