Quote:
Originally Posted by Lt. Washburn
Just checked the earthcam and there was what looked like a police car at the bottom of the ramp. Unless they were driving people down who didn't want to walk....what might that be about?
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There are always vehichles going down the ramp...
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...drock/?apage=1
Dismantling Ground Zero’s Bridge to Bedrock
By David W. Dunlap
December 9, 2008
At first, it was a bridge back to earth’s surface from a pit where steel beams seemed to writhe like serpents and death was everywhere underfoot.
Then, the 460-foot-long ramp between Liberty Street and the bedrock level of the World Trade Center site became a bridge to memory, a fixed conduit in an upended realm, a link to that day in September 2001 and to family members who were, quite truly, lost; their remains unfound.
Something about the ramp — its gentle angle, its tough utilitarianism, its indispensability and its durability — inspired gravity in those who walked slowly down its length to the heart of ground zero: a spot within the outline of the north tower, which was the first to be struck on 9/11.
The ramp “gave you time to approach,” said Paula G. Berry, whose husband, David S. Berry, was killed in the attack. “That length of time was very important. It prepared you for what you were about to go into.”
Now, the Liberty Street ramp has become an impediment.
“We literally need the space to build our steelwork,” said Joseph C. Daniels, the president and chief executive of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center.
And so
the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced on Tuesday that the ramp will be dismantled, beginning this weekend, to permit construction to proceed on the memorial and museum, which occupy the same area of the crowded trade center site.
“Removal of the ramp represents real and tangible progress,” Anthony R. Coscia, the chairman of the authority, said in a statement.
At a time when economic doubts are clouding the near-term prospects for the commercial and retail development envisioned at the new World Trade Center, Mr. Coscia has laid emphasis on the public-oriented projects there.
To supplant the makeshift earthwork roadways that had been flattened out of mud and rubble piles in the early days of the recovery, a steel ramp was constructed in March 2002. It connected the subterranean recovery area with Liberty Street, a difference in height of almost 80 feet. The ramp, actually five spans supported by trusswork piers, was designed to accommodate weights of more than 45 tons.
Not long after the ramp was installed, more than a dozen remains were found on the site, including a number of firefighters from Ladder Company 4 in mid-Manhattan, and it was quickly pressed into service as a kind of funerary pathway. The final ceremonial removal, in May 2002, was that of the last World Trade Center column still standing. Its solemn trip up the ramp marked the formal end to the recovery.
In the long interim before construction began in earnest, the ramp was used by thousands of victims’ relatives to reach bedrock on the Sept. 11 anniversaries. They were joined in the first year by President Bush and last September by Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Pope Benedict XVI made his way down the ramp in April for a memorial service at ground zero.
The authority estimated that it would take a month to dismantle the ramp.
Some part of it — no one is sure yet which part — will be salvaged for eventual display in the memorial museum. Mr. Daniels said it could be used to help tell the story of the aftermath of 9/11.
“Objects take on meaning over time,” he said on Tuesday. “The ramp has represented not only the physical, but the emotional connection between the very bedrock where the events took place and the city — and the world — that surrounds it. We don’t take its removal lightly.”
He added: “What it shows is that the memorial is being built, and the memorial itself will be the connection. And, in a sense, the ramp will no longer be needed.”
Christopher O. Ward, the executive director of the Port Authority, put it a bit more simply. “Its absence represents progress,” he said.
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