'New York Remembers' with exhibitions of 9/11 artifacts

A "New York Remembers" campaign will be launched in late August with exhibitions of 9/11 artifacts, some for the first time, across New York state to mark the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The exhibitions at 30 public sites will allow residents to pay respects to the more than 2,700 people killed in the attacks against the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and to remember the emotional, physical and financial scars on the state.
The dead included 343 fire-fighters and dozens of police officers who rushed to the site under attack to try to rescue people inside. An estimated 25,000 people were safely evacuated from the towers and the surrounding area. The huge volume of artifacts collected since September 11, 2001, have been stored in hangars in New Jersey and in the New York State Museum. They will be displayed at the 30 sites until the end of September.
The National September 9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero will permanently host some of the artifacts in Lower Manhattan, and its walls will engraved with the names of close to 3,000 people killed in the 1993 and 2001 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center.
"These exhibitions will give New Yorkers across the state a poignant and respectful place to gather, to honour and to reflect on the horrendous and life-altering terrorist attacks that occurred here 10 years ago," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said. He said the exhibitions should bring the inhabitants of the state together "to make sure that we never forget what happened on that horrible day." More than 2,000 artefacts, from crushed fire trucks to twisted and burned steel beams from the 110-storey towers, had been collected.
In the 10 months following the September 11 attacks, New York police and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation recovered thousands of human remains and more than 50,000 pieces of personal property. While the human remains are kept in a vault for DNA identification, the personal property, if claimed, was returned to the owners or heirs of those killed, while others are kept by the state as part of the 9/11 artefacts.
Among the artefacts collected are 49 pieces of two commercial airplanes, hijacked by terrorists after takeoff from Boston and flown like guided missiles into the twin towers. They include pieces of the fuselage and engine parts. Jean Roger was a flight attendant who died when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 was slammed against one of the towers. Her father, Tom, said the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks will be "very emotional" for those who lost loved ones.