Hurt relatives believe some lives are less valued

ON WALL STREET: The first, half-hearted, snow of New York's exceptionally mild winter briefly coated the moonscape surface of Ground Zero last week, but was not enough to stop the epic excavation work, writes Conor O'Clery.

The weather has been kind to the volunteers, who toil around the clock sifting and clearing the debris of the World Trade Centre. With October and November having been the warmest on record, the clean-up has proceeded at a stunning pace, outstripping predictions and taking officials by surprise.

More than one million tons of material have been removed in an operation that some said would take two years, but is now likely to be completed by June. What had been an overwhelming mountain of rubble and twisted metal is now a square crater, in which two dozen excavators probe deep into the basements of the 110-storey twin towers and down to bedrock - where a green pond has formed. Last Thursday, the machines broke through to two crushed trains parked on the underground Pathe system linking Manhattan with New Jersey.

The trains were empty, but bodies and remains are being found almost every day deep in the rubble by the scores of volunteers and retired firefighters - like Captain John Vigiano (63), whose fireman son John is one of 2,256 victims still unaccounted for - who maintain a day-and-night vigil.

All the burnt-out shells of perimeter buildings have been pulled down, making the site a less dramatic spectacle for the thousands of tourists who queue for the special viewing stand. By the first anniversary of the attacks, a temporary memorial park with grass and trees could be in place, officials say.

"We don't want that hole to be sitting there with nothing going on. That would be the worst thing," said Mr John Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, set up to co-ordinate the reconstruction. Public hearings on the long-term future of the 16-acre site will start next month and a draft plan - possibly for a complex of offices, concert and exhibition halls and residences - could be in place within three months.

Any serious rebuilding at Ground Zero might not start for two to three years, however, as litigation, insurance and environmental and aesthetic issues have to be debated and resolved. The wrangling over the government's Victims' Compensation Fund is evidence of how the attacks have already left the legacy of a legal minefield. The fund is offering cheques between $300,000 and $4.3 million (€335,000-€4.8 million) per victim - the lowest amounts for single, low-paid elderly workers and the highest for young earners with top salaries and children, on condition that families waive legal action against the airlines.

Relatives of the least well-off victims feel hurt that their lives are valued less, and the deduction of insurance means some will actually get nothing, while those bereaved through earlier acts of terrorism are asking why they did not merit similar treatment.

NOR do the relatives of ordinary workers have access to individual company compensation such as the $100,000 minimum paid to each family by Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 of its 960 people working at the World Trade Centre. Incredibly, the investment company has picked itself up and recorded a profit for the fourth quarter.

There could be prolonged controversy between proponents of business development and advocates of a grand memorial park at Ground Zero, which would continue the transformation, from financial centre to residential area, of Lower Manhattan that has been going on for years.

Citizens' ideas for a memorial are pouring in, ranging from a 700-foot steel sun dial to a retreat of evergreen trees and flowers. The first new building will be a replacement for No 7 World Trade Centre, the 47-storey tower that housed the FBI and the mayor's emergency command centre, if Mr Larry Silverstein has his way: he's the developer whose consortium signed a $3.2 billion lease on the World Trade Centre in July. If it was started soon it would be "a shot in the arm" for Lower Manhattan, he said.

Meanwhile, life around Ground Zero is getting back to normal. A multiplex cinema contaminated with asbestos dust and several restaurants remain closed, and hundreds of tenants in Battery Park City have moved away permanently, but 24 of the 25 residential blocks there have reopened. The popular Century 21 department store will resume business soon, and American Express will begin reoccupying its 50-storey glass tower in the adjacent World Financial Centre in April.

Mr David Emil, the restaurateur who ran Windows on the World on the North Tower of the World Trade Centre and whose entire morning shift of 79 employees was killed, is bidding to renovate the Battery Park Maritime Building, a run-down ferry terminal, as a grand restaurant and banquet hall.

The QE2 sailed by last week for the first time since September 11th, saluting in maritime tradition with two mighty blasts, and causing the workers in the crater to look up, if only for a moment, from their labours.