Contractors Sift Through Debris at Fresh Kills

While the first stage of clean-up efforts takes place at Ground Zero in Manhattan, a second phase is underway at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island.

Fresh Kills had stopped accepting waste for burial earlier in 2001. After the attack, however, it was the logical place to haul debris for processing.

Contractors and subcontractors at the site have been accepting mixed loads and running them through screening equipment. At the screening lines, homicide investigators sift through the material for personal artifacts, body parts and other evidence that can confirm victims were at the scene.

One of the contractors on site, Taylor Recycling, Montgomery, N.Y., is running debris through finger screens made by Erin Systems Inc., Portland, Maine.

According to Hans Taylor, the efforts are non-stop, with the crews and machinery running “24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Doug Logan, national recycling specialist with Erin Systems, says crews are doing a pre-sort of material at Fresh Kills, pulling out larger pieces of steel for recycling. Material is then sent to the screening machines where investigators look for evidence to be pulled from the stream of material.

Logan describes the mixture of materials as “a high concentration of steel, including rebar and conduit, and wet aggregate dirt.” The wet aggregate comes from the constant hosing down of material at ground zero, which is being done to bring down the temperature at the core of the still smoldering wreckage. “At the core, as of early November, it was still 1000 degrees Fahrenheit,” notes Logan.

Taylor and other contractors have been able to keep up with the flow of material that arrives, avoiding a stockpiling situation at the landfill, according to Howard Fiedler of Erin Systems.