ABSTRACT
CONTENTS Introduction............................................................................................ 380 Managing Mass Fatalities and Victim Identification: Previous Research.. 384
Activities Utilized to Recover and Identify Victims ........................ 387 Symbolic Nature of Body Retrieval ................................................ 391
Managing Mass Fatalities and Victim Identification Following the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers................................ 392
Nature of the Disaster Site ............................................................. 392 Timing of the Events ..................................................................... 392
Nature of the Disaster Itself ........................................................... 393 Continuity and Change in the Response to the World
Trade Center Collapse ...................................................... 393 Concluding Remarks............................................................................... 397 Bibliography............................................................................................ 398
Introduction On the morning of September 11, 2001, two hijacked commercial aircraft struck the World Trade Center towers (WTCT) in New York City. The towers were hit by Boeing 767s en route from Boston to Los Angeles-each loaded with jet fuel for the cross-country flight. The South Tower, known as World Trade Center 2, collapsed just in under hour after it was hit. The North Tower, or World Trade Center 1, collapsed approximately an hour and a half after impact. The destruction of the towers and surrounding buildings produced an estimated 1.5 million tons of debris concentrated in the approximately 16 acres of the World Trade Center complex of buildings situated in lower Manhattan. Owing to a combination of factors, including the uncertainty regarding the number, identities, and whereabouts of people in the buildings at the time of the collapse, the first official estimates of the number of dead and missing were not issued until September 13.* On that date, 4763 persons were reported as missing and 184 people were confirmed as dead. The number of missing persons would be revised upward (with the highest number-6453announced on September 24) and then downward in the days and weeks following the tragedy as disaster officials sorted through reports from businesses, family, friends, coworkers, and foreign embassies regarding people thought to have been in or around the WTCT on the morning of September 11. On October 12, four weeks after the event, the number of missing and presumed dead (4715) plus the number of confirmed dead (442) was placed at more than 5100 people. Significantly, only 385 bodies had been identified by this time.
