While the world focuses its attention next week on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, particularly in New York, some portions of the World Trade Center buildings have taken on a new life and may rise again. VOA-TV’s Bob Morris explains.
In this scrap metal field in Northern India, plans are being made for the beams and girders that once held up the World Trade Center's twin towers.
It has been a long journey for the last pieces of the World Trade Center buildings. Tons of steel from what became known as “Ground Zero” now have a new home half way around the world in the Indian state of Punjab.
NATURAL SOUND - steel plant
Sixteen thousand tons of steel remnants from the terrorist attack will get a new life, on a new continent.
NATURAL SOUND - FACTORY WORKER - (Speaking in Hindi)
This steel worker says ‘We are melting it with a heavy heart.’ When the scrap metal arrived, he says, the workers observed two minutes of silence out of respect.
NATURAL SOUND - welding
As they weld and hammer and cut the steel into usable pieces, they are well aware of the tremendous sacrifices that brought it to Punjab State. They know that twenty-eight hundred people died in the towers.
Factory manager S.K. Sinha.
S.K. SINHA, FACTORY MANAGER
“We are very sorry, we feel very deep grief and sorrow for them.”
The workers are also thankful because, as one man said, they've never seen such high quality steel. What had been scrap metal from the remains of the twin towers in New York City will go a long way toward making solid machinery... and new buildings throughout India.