WEBVTT - The Fines 0:00:23.579 --> 0:00:27.040 Not long ago, my producer Lucy Sullivan visited one of 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:30.060 the largest parks in New York City. Not Central Park. 0:00:30.820 --> 0:00:35.760 Not Prospect Park. Fresh Gills Park. On Staten Island. Lucy 0:00:35.780 --> 0:00:39.000 was there with Ben Nadaf-Haffrey reporting for our latest series, 0:00:39.420 --> 0:00:43.200 The Staten Island Problem. And while she was there, Lucy 0:00:43.300 --> 0:00:46.150 uncovered a mystery. There was one part of the park, 0:00:46.430 --> 0:00:49.190 one section, that she wasn't allowed to visit. 0:00:49.970 --> 0:00:50.229 Why? 0:00:51.190 --> 0:00:56.330 Because of what's buried there. Today the park is Rolling 0:00:56.350 --> 0:01:00.610 Green Hills, a beautiful and peaceful place. But Fresh Kills, 0:01:00.990 --> 0:01:03.900 as you may know, used to be the world's largest landfill. 0:01:04.729 --> 0:01:07.700 Mayor Rudy Giuliani closed it in the 90s, and the 0:01:07.729 --> 0:01:11.360 last barge sailed to Staten Island in March of 2001. 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:18.770 Or so everyone thought. Six months later, in September of 2001, 0:01:18.770 --> 0:01:22.770 it had to reopen. Fresh Kills became the site of 0:01:22.810 --> 0:01:26.130 a giant operation to sort through the rubble from the 0:01:26.150 --> 0:01:29.929 9-11 terrorist attacks. The last thing brought to the landfill 0:01:30.270 --> 0:01:33.240 was what remained of the Twin Towers and all the 0:01:33.289 --> 0:01:40.040 people who perished there. A giant pile of dirt and dust. Today, 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:42.720 Lucy Sullivan has a story about that pile of dust 0:01:43.139 --> 0:01:45.179 and the battle continued. over where it should go. As 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:50.639 the saying goes, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But 0:01:50.660 --> 0:01:54.169 when are we no longer ourselves? When do we become dust? 0:01:55.570 --> 0:01:59.930 It all began with a promise. Here's Lucy. 0:02:02.490 --> 0:02:06.169 On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Charles Hirsch rushed 0:02:06.230 --> 0:02:09.510 downtown to the site of the Twin Towers. Hirsch was 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:12.740 the city's chief medical examiner. He knew his team had 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:14.920 to move quickly. they would need to set up a 0:02:14.940 --> 0:02:18.900 temporary morgue. When the North Tower collapsed, Hirsch was hit 0:02:18.940 --> 0:02:22.440 with debris and badly injured. Mayor Giuliani spoke to the press. 0:02:24.060 --> 0:02:28.130 Dr. Hirsch was injured and had to be treated, but 0:02:28.150 --> 0:02:32.130 he's organized his office and they are ready to deal 0:02:32.150 --> 0:02:36.130 with thousands and thousands of bodies if they have to. 0:02:37.990 --> 0:02:41.730 Leaving Ground Zero, Hirsch was caked in dust. Later, he 0:02:41.790 --> 0:02:45.060 reached into his pockets and found fistfuls of it He 0:02:45.100 --> 0:02:47.390 told the New York Times that's when it dawned on him. 0:02:48.370 --> 0:02:51.410 If concrete was pulverized into dust, it wasn't much of 0:02:51.450 --> 0:02:54.450 a mystery what might have happened to people. It wouldn't 0:02:54.490 --> 0:02:57.710 be thousands of bodies, but thousands of body parts. 0:02:58.790 --> 0:03:00.130 So he made a promise. 0:03:00.890 --> 0:03:05.550 Charles Hirsch, the medical examiner, says we will never rest 0:03:05.630 --> 0:03:08.690 until all remains are identified. 0:03:08.710 --> 0:03:12.540 This is Jay Aronson, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. 0:03:13.270 --> 0:03:15.850 He wrote a book called Who Owns the Dead? The 0:03:15.890 --> 0:03:18.210 Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero. 0:03:19.210 --> 0:03:23.540 These kinds of issues are a daily occurrence for people 0:03:23.580 --> 0:03:26.080 in war zones. I wanted to kind of bring that 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:31.360 home to Americans. I wanted Americans to understand what people 0:03:31.770 --> 0:03:34.210 in other parts of the world go through on a 0:03:34.430 --> 0:03:37.410 regular basis, particularly in conflict zones. 0:03:39.050 --> 0:03:41.650 9-11 was the first time in modern history that Americans 0:03:41.690 --> 0:03:43.930 were dealing with this scale of dismemberment on U.S. 0:03:43.950 --> 0:03:44.270 Soil. 0:03:45.210 --> 0:03:46.910 And right then, DNA. 0:03:46.550 --> 0:03:49.210 Technology had evolved to be able to identify the dead 0:03:49.630 --> 0:03:51.210 in a way that was never possible before. 0:03:53.990 --> 0:03:57.850 Really in the context of the Balkan Wars, scientists needed 0:03:57.870 --> 0:04:02.200 to develop ways of dealing with decayed and degraded bone 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:07.280 and tissue to match very degraded DNA samples to family samples. 0:04:07.340 --> 0:04:11.620 And so that That early work was really coming to 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.100 fruition right when 9-11 happened. 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:17.410 This meant, on the one hand, that there was a 0:04:17.450 --> 0:04:20.570 chance that anything with a trace of the victims could 0:04:20.610 --> 0:04:24.570 potentially be identified for families. But it also meant that 0:04:24.589 --> 0:04:28.560 the promise Charles Hirsch made to identify every remain found 0:04:28.980 --> 0:04:31.520 and not to rest until they did would lead to 0:04:31.580 --> 0:04:33.219 big expectations from the public. 0:04:37.180 --> 0:04:40.990 That I think affirms the view in some families' minds 0:04:41.050 --> 0:04:44.370 that all of the remains are sacred, that the goal 0:04:44.430 --> 0:04:48.210 isn't just to positively identify in a forensic sense the 0:04:48.810 --> 0:04:51.450 presence of a particular individual at the site at the 0:04:51.510 --> 0:04:54.880 time of the attacks, but that there was something sacred 0:04:54.900 --> 0:05:01.140 about each and every bit of their body, and that 0:05:01.580 --> 0:05:04.200 all of the bits, all of the pieces that could 0:05:04.260 --> 0:05:07.849 be associated with a particular person should be returned to 0:05:07.890 --> 0:05:10.210 that family or should be handled in a particular way. 0:05:11.330 --> 0:05:13.690 There were rumors in those first few days that tens 0:05:13.750 --> 0:05:17.060 of thousands of people might be missing or dead. Up 0:05:17.130 --> 0:05:20.460 to 200,000 people visited the World Trade Center complex. 0:05:20.060 --> 0:05:22.580 Each day, and 50,000 people worked there. 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.220 Matthew Horning worked as a database administrator on the 95th 0:05:28.260 --> 0:05:31.350 floor of the North Tower. He was 26 years old. 0:05:32.990 --> 0:05:34.990 On a hot July day, I drove out to New 0:05:35.030 --> 0:05:36.450 Jersey to speak with his parents. 0:05:37.340 --> 0:05:37.860 Hello. 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:38.940 How are you? 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:39.659 I am. 0:05:39.700 --> 0:05:40.460 Nice to meet you. 0:05:41.230 --> 0:05:42.080 Thanks for having me. 0:05:42.230 --> 0:05:45.710 His mother, Diane, and I settled onto the couch. His father, Kurt, 0:05:45.790 --> 0:05:48.650 showed me a picture of him. Matthew had light brown 0:05:48.690 --> 0:05:49.690 hair and a goatee. 0:05:50.150 --> 0:05:51.150 This is why I wear it all. 0:05:52.010 --> 0:05:53.170 That's a picture of my son. 0:05:53.730 --> 0:05:54.230 In your wallet. 0:05:54.310 --> 0:05:55.089 Yeah, in my wallet. 0:05:55.130 --> 0:05:56.190 They carry it all the time. 0:05:57.160 --> 0:05:59.620 As Diane told me, Matthew was just getting started. 0:06:00.620 --> 0:06:02.219 Matthew was. 0:06:05.620 --> 0:06:05.970 I mean, he. 0:06:07.370 --> 0:06:11.510 He was wonderful. He had great friends. He was good 0:06:11.630 --> 0:06:14.140 to me. He was good to the family. He was 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:18.360 not flawless. But he didn't think of himself as anything 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:23.940 super special. In fact, his email address was IamACog. Because 0:06:23.980 --> 0:06:28.409 you would ask him, what's your job? He was in IT. 0:06:29.290 --> 0:06:31.270 What do you do? He says, you know those little 0:06:31.330 --> 0:06:34.190 pieces that if one kicks off the whole cog, the 0:06:34.230 --> 0:06:37.250 wheel doesn't turn? I'm one of those. I'm a cog 0:06:37.290 --> 0:06:37.730 in the wheel. 0:06:40.470 --> 0:06:43.190 Diane said Matthew could be funny. He had just started 0:06:43.210 --> 0:06:45.349 dating a nice girl who he hoped to marry someday. 0:06:46.250 --> 0:06:48.470 He liked to play Dungeons and Dragons with his friends, 0:06:48.710 --> 0:06:50.980 and he wanted to be a fantasy writer. He was 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:53.260 signed up to take a writing class on September 12th. 0:06:54.260 --> 0:06:56.600 He lived the way most guys in their late 20s do. 0:06:57.200 --> 0:06:59.020 As we used to say, he lived in a place 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:02.940 that everybody used to want to move out of. And 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:06.760 his roommate, you'd go and you'd just go. Okay, is 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:08.240 this how I raised you? 0:07:09.420 --> 0:07:11.420 Kurt and Diane Horning reminded me a lot of my 0:07:11.460 --> 0:07:14.110 own parents. They live in the same house they raised 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:17.430 their children in. They've been married for 56 years, and 0:07:17.450 --> 0:07:20.650 they've lived here for 53 of those. They have another child, 0:07:20.890 --> 0:07:28.450 a daughter, and grandkids now. In the corner of the room, 0:07:28.770 --> 0:07:32.230 there's a makeshift memorial to Matthew. Diane took a wooden 0:07:32.250 --> 0:07:34.990 bowl off of a bookcase and emptied it onto the couch. 0:07:36.210 --> 0:07:40.330 This is his wallet. His wallet was, these are all 0:07:40.390 --> 0:07:46.980 the things that were in his wallet. And when they 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.660 found these things, they sealed them and put them, you know, 0:07:51.700 --> 0:07:54.320 like they sealed. This was the money that was in 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:58.740 his wallet, and it was sealed in this packaging. That 0:07:58.780 --> 0:07:59.940 was found at Fresh Kills. 0:08:01.260 --> 0:08:04.590 During the sorting operation at Fresh Kills, Victims' families could 0:08:04.610 --> 0:08:07.630 schedule visits to see what was going on there. Diane 0:08:07.650 --> 0:08:11.090 doesn't remember when exactly she first visited, but she remembers 0:08:11.130 --> 0:08:14.060 what she saw. She showed me some pictures she took 0:08:14.250 --> 0:08:17.800 on one of her trips. This looks like just a 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:21.540 crack in the earth and some, like, grass with, like, 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:22.360 hay maybe? 0:08:22.540 --> 0:08:24.730 Yep, that was something I put on top of it, 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:27.720 but you could see pieces of the fire hose. 0:08:28.660 --> 0:08:30.480 Oh, wow, yeah, it's like a fire hose in the 0:08:30.540 --> 0:08:31.780 dirt with some flowers on it. 0:08:31.980 --> 0:08:32.140 Yep. 0:08:32.709 --> 0:08:37.910 You could see pieces of the building. You could see this, 0:08:38.050 --> 0:08:42.500 which was a huge piece of cloth. We found shoes. 0:08:44.199 --> 0:08:46.819 They said everything to a quarter of an inch has 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:53.059 been sifted out. They did not sift down to a quarter. 0:08:53.130 --> 0:08:53.749 They lied. 0:08:55.270 --> 0:08:56.250 Diane was shocked. 0:08:57.250 --> 0:08:59.489 Fresh Kills was not supposed to look like this. 0:09:00.689 --> 0:09:02.069 Something didn't seem right to her. 0:09:03.859 --> 0:09:06.059 This was the beginning of a fight for the Hornings, 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:11.179 and other families too, over what exactly Charles Hirsch's promise meant, 0:09:12.239 --> 0:09:25.749 and where the remains of the dead should go. Dennis 0:09:25.790 --> 0:09:29.410 Diggins was the superintendent of the Fresh Kills landfill. He 0:09:29.449 --> 0:09:32.429 was in charge of overseeing its closure, and then its reopening. 0:09:33.099 --> 0:09:35.920 in the early morning hours of September. 0:09:35.179 --> 0:09:37.630 12, 2001. 0:09:37.630 --> 0:09:40.590 So we got the first load out to the Frescoes, 0:09:40.630 --> 0:09:45.709 I guess around 2 o'clock in the morning. And then 0:09:45.750 --> 0:09:50.260 I just shot home, and I look like somebody dumped 0:09:50.319 --> 0:09:53.719 a load of saccharine on my head. So I actually 0:09:53.739 --> 0:09:58.300 got undressed in the garage and ran into the shower. 0:09:59.239 --> 0:10:01.480 And then I was back at Frescoes the next morning 0:10:01.540 --> 0:10:02.409 by 7 o'clock. 0:10:03.359 --> 0:10:06.620 Diggins helped manage the cleanup for the sanitation department. City 0:10:06.660 --> 0:10:08.949 officials started meeting at a school down the street from 0:10:08.989 --> 0:10:12.019 Ground Zero. It became the de facto command center. 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:17.119 You went in and you saw all these top engineers 0:10:17.140 --> 0:10:21.019 from all over the city sitting on these little seats. 0:10:22.699 --> 0:10:27.780 They were like kindergarten seats. And you knew once those 0:10:27.859 --> 0:10:30.829 egos were checked and sitting there, you knew we were 0:10:30.849 --> 0:10:33.729 going to get through this. Uh, but it was still 0:10:33.750 --> 0:10:34.989 a daunting experience. 0:10:37.750 --> 0:10:41.390 The world's largest garbage dump was now an active crime scene. 0:10:42.309 --> 0:10:44.849 The sorting and searching operation was all going to take 0:10:44.900 --> 0:10:46.139 place at Fresh Kills. 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:50.139 Which really made the most sense because Fresh Kills is a, uh, 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:56.250 it's a city-owned facility. It's secured, it's fenced in, uh, 0:10:57.859 --> 0:10:59.949 It's a marina loading facility, so if you want to 0:10:59.989 --> 0:11:04.030 barge material there, you can barge material. And again, we 0:11:04.050 --> 0:11:08.370 had 170 acres of flat plateau to work off of. 0:11:09.689 --> 0:11:11.980 At first, they were sorting through the material by hand, 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:13.379 with shovels and rakes. 0:11:14.059 --> 0:11:15.600 And by the way, someone I spoke to for. 0:11:15.540 --> 0:11:18.479 This story made clear that material was the best word 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:18.879 to use. 0:11:19.540 --> 0:11:21.290 Not debris, the word I'd been using. 0:11:22.410 --> 0:11:25.309 Eventually, they brought in these sifting machines— which could take 0:11:25.329 --> 0:11:28.600 the material and separate it out through screens to pieces 0:11:28.660 --> 0:11:31.420 that were a quarter of an inch. That's about half 0:11:31.479 --> 0:11:34.660 the size of your thumbnail. Everything else that passed through 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:37.020 was considered inconsequential dirt and dust. 0:11:37.540 --> 0:11:38.079 Leftovers. 0:11:39.199 --> 0:11:42.040 Whenever human remains were found, and they were found often 0:11:42.079 --> 0:11:45.000 in those first few months, they were immediately sent to 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:46.800 the office of the chief medical examiner. 0:11:47.500 --> 0:11:51.360 They found lots of personal items too. Wallets, ID cards, watches. 0:11:52.510 --> 0:11:54.370 The men and women who worked in press kills were 0:11:54.390 --> 0:11:57.949 never trained for anything like this. Tractor operators who were 0:11:58.050 --> 0:12:01.129 moving material around in the sorting fields, I mean, they 0:12:01.170 --> 0:12:06.290 saw human remains on a daily basis. And you would 0:12:06.309 --> 0:12:08.850 see it as you were walking by. They would walk 0:12:08.870 --> 0:12:12.209 by with a pail, and you knew what was inside. 0:12:12.250 --> 0:12:16.189 But I think everybody stepped up and did what they 0:12:16.209 --> 0:12:18.349 had to do and treated it with the utmost respect. 0:12:21.309 --> 0:12:23.770 There were certain kinks to work out in the searching process. 0:12:24.550 --> 0:12:26.630 One of them was getting the speed of the sifters right, 0:12:26.969 --> 0:12:29.329 so that people could catch things without getting motion sick. 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.200 Another was accounting for the fact that people were working 0:12:32.219 --> 0:12:35.300 around the clock, 24-7. It didn't take a day off 0:12:35.339 --> 0:12:39.280 until Thanksgiving of that year. And then there were the seagulls. 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:43.130 An NYPD official said they knew which piles of material 0:12:43.589 --> 0:12:46.910 had lots of human remains, because seagulls would circle above, 0:12:47.689 --> 0:12:51.159 and they'd have to fight them off. By July of 2002, 0:12:51.140 --> 0:12:54.839 the city thought the operation at Fresh Kills was finished. 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.679 It ended ahead of schedule and under budget, rare for 0:12:58.699 --> 0:13:03.069 a government project. All told, they sorted about 1.5 million 0:13:03.109 --> 0:13:07.170 tons of material from ground zero. That's about 600 Olympic 0:13:07.189 --> 0:13:11.010 swimming pools worth of stuff. But then there's this fact 0:13:11.130 --> 0:13:13.449 of the fines. What are the fines? 0:13:15.380 --> 0:13:16.179 What are the fines? 0:13:16.199 --> 0:13:16.540 Mm-hmm. 0:13:17.380 --> 0:13:20.699 The fines were the material that came through the sifter. 0:13:21.780 --> 0:13:23.599 After it was searched out to a quarter of an inch, 0:13:23.660 --> 0:13:29.059 those fines were then taken. Everything that was landfilled was 0:13:29.140 --> 0:13:32.960 put into an area of about 45 acres on the 0:13:33.020 --> 0:13:37.800 western side of the landfill. So that it was determined 0:13:37.859 --> 0:13:39.819 that at the end of the day, we would be 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.319 able to cordon off this area that was all World 0:13:43.339 --> 0:13:44.300 Trade Center material. 0:13:44.319 --> 0:13:46.179 The fines. 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:53.470 F-I-N-E-S. Unidentified dirt and dust. The last stuff to be 0:13:53.510 --> 0:13:58.530 left at Fresh Kills. Not garbage, not debris, but nothing 0:13:58.569 --> 0:14:00.709 to be salvaged, at least from the city's point of view. 0:14:02.510 --> 0:14:04.609 Of course, not everyone saw it that way. 0:14:05.829 --> 0:14:09.780 They treated my son like garbage. This was the largest 0:14:09.900 --> 0:14:14.520 garbage dump that had been recently closed. So while the 0:14:14.579 --> 0:14:19.899 people who killed my son I have certainly an animosity 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:25.150 for them. I have a huge animosity for the people 0:14:25.170 --> 0:14:30.890 who were running New York and running our federal government also, 0:14:32.270 --> 0:14:35.750 who allowed my son to be put in a garbage dump. 0:14:36.790 --> 0:14:38.760 Now we've got to do this fast, clean it up, 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:42.680 and get it out of our sight. Out of sight, 0:14:42.739 --> 0:14:43.460 out of mind. 0:14:44.140 --> 0:14:44.640 Out of mind. 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:48.639 When I went to visit the Hornings in New Jersey, 0:14:49.180 --> 0:14:51.720 the first thing I noticed was a bumper sticker on 0:14:51.739 --> 0:14:52.560 their car out front. 0:14:53.340 --> 0:14:54.740 I had Diane read me what it said. 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.140 The Fresh Kills garbage dump is no resting place for 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:01.720 the WTC 9-11 victims. We need your help. 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:06.229 Before Matthew was killed, Diane said she was not an organizer, 0:15:06.710 --> 0:15:10.350 not especially political. But in the face of insurmountable grief 0:15:10.690 --> 0:15:13.830 over losing her son in a terrorist attack, she decided 0:15:13.850 --> 0:15:15.489 to fight the only people she really could. 0:15:16.340 --> 0:15:21.300 The city of New York. The Hornings had one demand. 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.060 Do not leave the remains of our son in the 0:15:24.100 --> 0:15:27.739 Fresh Kills garbage dump. From their kitchen table, the Hornings 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:31.320 started a group called WTC Families for a Proper Burial 0:15:31.820 --> 0:15:34.830 with others who had lost loved ones. They were fighting 0:15:34.870 --> 0:15:37.609 to have the finds, that big pile of dust left 0:15:37.670 --> 0:15:40.830 over from the sorting operation, moved out of the landfill 0:15:41.090 --> 0:15:44.409 and into a more dignified place. The group met every 0:15:44.450 --> 0:15:47.610 month at the Union Library in New Jersey. They attended 0:15:47.690 --> 0:15:50.109 public planning meetings and protested at others. 0:15:51.229 --> 0:15:55.570 So I became the spokesperson because I wasn't afraid to speak. 0:15:56.470 --> 0:15:58.110 So you could say, well, we're going to meet the mayor. 0:15:58.130 --> 0:16:02.520 I don't care. You know, that's okay. I'll talk to anybody. 0:16:04.020 --> 0:16:04.860 And they did meet the mayor. 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:08.259 Kurt and Diane told me they had a private, one-on-one 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:09.680 meeting with Mayor Bloomberg. 0:16:10.540 --> 0:16:12.300 He was on his way to a basketball game, so 0:16:12.340 --> 0:16:18.430 we had to make it fast. And he said, well, 0:16:18.510 --> 0:16:21.590 I'm giving my body to science, so burial doesn't matter 0:16:21.630 --> 0:16:26.530 to me. We said, we think that's great. That's your choice. 0:16:27.210 --> 0:16:29.930 But we need a choice, too. And our choice is 0:16:29.989 --> 0:16:31.020 to bury our children. 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:37.260 On May 30, 2002, a ceremony was held at Ground Zero, 0:16:37.660 --> 0:16:40.860 marking the end of the recovery effort there. But then, 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:45.210 a couple years later, during a construction project, additional human 0:16:45.250 --> 0:16:48.869 remains were found across the street from the towers on 0:16:48.910 --> 0:16:51.650 the roof of the Deutsche Bank building. This kicked off 0:16:51.729 --> 0:16:54.409 a new effort, which led to the discovery of over 0:16:54.450 --> 0:16:58.609 a thousand bone fragments, human tissue, and other remains over 0:16:58.630 --> 0:17:02.550 the next few years. Some were discovered by accident, like 0:17:02.590 --> 0:17:05.450 when Con Ed workers were digging in a manhole. It 0:17:05.490 --> 0:17:09.210 was clear that certain areas had been missed. The WTC 0:17:09.230 --> 0:17:11.600 families group thought there was a chance that things might 0:17:11.620 --> 0:17:15.250 have been missed at Fresh Kills, too. After all, Diane 0:17:15.270 --> 0:17:17.830 had taken those pictures of stuff larger than a quarter 0:17:17.850 --> 0:17:22.260 of an inch, like the fire hose. In 2002, a 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:25.220 bill was introduced in the New Jersey legislature that would 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.400 have required officials to remove the fines from Fresh Kills 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:31.720 and place them into containers to be stored at Ground Zero. 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:35.990 The bill never really went anywhere. The fines were determined 0:17:36.090 --> 0:17:37.250 to be somewhere between 360,000 and 480,000 tons. 0:17:41.730 --> 0:17:44.450 If you picture it, that's about one football field in length, 0:17:45.010 --> 0:17:49.120 piled 200 feet high. Promises were made to the families 0:17:49.180 --> 0:17:51.840 by city officials, saying that the fines would be dealt 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:55.960 with somehow, that they wouldn't be forgotten. But those well-intentioned 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:58.480 promises sent the Hornings spinning in circles. 0:17:59.420 --> 0:18:03.830 They sent us to the coroner's office. He was a 0:18:03.860 --> 0:18:06.530 wonderful man, by the way. But the person we had 0:18:06.570 --> 0:18:10.120 to deal with was Barbara Butcher. And then they send 0:18:10.180 --> 0:18:11.520 us to— Wait, I'm sorry, that was her name? 0:18:11.740 --> 0:18:12.120 Her name. 0:18:12.820 --> 0:18:14.930 And then we go to Fresh Kills and we deal 0:18:14.970 --> 0:18:18.710 with Dennis Diggins. And there were other names like that. 0:18:18.750 --> 0:18:23.610 We're going, what is going on here? We felt like 0:18:23.650 --> 0:18:27.590 we were in a Dickens novel. We really did. And 0:18:28.530 --> 0:18:31.900 if we didn't laugh, we cried. We laughed a lot. 0:18:32.540 --> 0:18:33.380 We cried a lot. 0:18:34.580 --> 0:18:37.990 Dennis Diggins, the person in charge at Fresh Kills— remembers 0:18:38.030 --> 0:18:40.440 the last meeting he had with the Hornings in his trailer. 0:18:41.100 --> 0:18:41.940 It didn't go so well. 0:18:43.220 --> 0:18:46.880 At one point in one of the meetings, he says, well, 0:18:47.060 --> 0:18:50.420 who ultimately told you to come and bring this material 0:18:50.460 --> 0:18:54.150 to Fresh Kells? So I said, well, it was determined 0:18:54.190 --> 0:18:57.530 by the mayor and the Office of Emergency Management determined 0:18:57.550 --> 0:19:01.510 that it should come here. So he said, so you 0:19:01.550 --> 0:19:05.440 just blindly followed orders like Nazis? You just followed orders? 0:19:06.220 --> 0:19:08.740 And at that point, I just said, listen, this meeting's over. 0:19:08.820 --> 0:19:11.440 If you're going to equate the work that we're doing 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:15.359 here to Nazi Germany, I'm done. I'm not talking to 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:16.220 you people anymore. 0:19:18.830 --> 0:19:21.470 The Hornings got some politicians to sign letters of support 0:19:21.510 --> 0:19:22.109 for their cause. 0:19:23.150 --> 0:19:24.430 Plans were starting to be made. 0:19:24.290 --> 0:19:26.650 For what the memorial would be, and the city held 0:19:26.710 --> 0:19:29.090 sessions for the public to attend and share their input. 0:19:30.170 --> 0:19:33.620 Diane wanted to make one thing clear. A landfill could 0:19:33.700 --> 0:19:35.180 never be a memorial in her eyes. 0:19:36.370 --> 0:19:39.590 I remember going to one of these symposiums, and I 0:19:40.110 --> 0:19:42.810 took a box, and I put garbage in the box, 0:19:43.370 --> 0:19:46.190 and then I gift-wrapped it. That old pretty bow and whatever. 0:19:46.630 --> 0:19:49.550 And then I opened it, and I said, I put 0:19:49.570 --> 0:19:51.670 it in a pretty box, but it's still garbage. 0:19:53.150 --> 0:19:56.040 Soon, a judge would weigh in on this fight. That's 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:56.620 after the break. 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.520 Around the middle of the 4th century BC, the dog 0:20:04.540 --> 0:20:07.560 philosopher Diogenes was chatting with friends about what should be 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:10.860 done with his body after he died. Here's cultural historian 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:11.640 Thomas Lequeur. 0:20:12.220 --> 0:20:17.760 You know, he's called the dog philosopher because dogs live naturally. Diogenes' 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:20.260 view of dogs, well, you know, they do all this 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:21.859 stuff in public that I'd like to do in public. 0:20:22.780 --> 0:20:25.320 He was sort of famous in antiquity as being sort 0:20:25.340 --> 0:20:27.520 of a truth-telling street person. 0:20:28.420 --> 0:20:30.690 Lequeur is author of the book The Work of the Dead. 0:20:31.360 --> 0:20:34.359 It begins with the story of Diogenes, a man who 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:36.710 lived in a barrel on the street and was opposed 0:20:36.750 --> 0:20:39.270 to all that was decent. He thought that humans should 0:20:39.310 --> 0:20:42.050 be able to masturbate and defecate in public the same 0:20:42.110 --> 0:20:45.670 way we eat in public. And so, when Diogenes was 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:47.880 talking about what should happen to him after he died, 0:20:48.460 --> 0:20:50.020 he said that he'd like to be thrown over the 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:54.080 city walls and disposed of like debris. I'm paraphrasing here, 0:20:54.500 --> 0:20:56.560 but the story goes that his friends pleaded with him, 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:01.280 saying animals would dismember his body. Diogenes said, okay, then 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:02.540 put a stick in my hand so that I can 0:21:02.580 --> 0:21:05.400 fight them off. His friends said, well, you wouldn't be 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:07.460 able to use the stick because you'd be dead. 0:21:08.380 --> 0:21:10.740 To which Diogenes replied, exactly. 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:17.260 Diogenes is... is right in that a human body is 0:21:17.980 --> 0:21:21.880 in no material way different from an animal body, which 0:21:21.940 --> 0:21:24.750 get eaten by vultures and dealt with in the ordinary 0:21:24.820 --> 0:21:29.550 course of ecology. And he's also right that he won't 0:21:29.710 --> 0:21:33.370 notice it. So it's nothing to him what happens to 0:21:33.450 --> 0:21:33.890 his body. 0:21:34.850 --> 0:21:36.850 But of course, Diogenes is very wrong. 0:21:37.650 --> 0:21:40.450 For thousands of years before and for thousands of years after, 0:21:41.010 --> 0:21:45.040 humanity has rejected his logical proposition. Although we know we 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.580 can't use a stick to fight off vultures when we die, 0:21:48.250 --> 0:21:50.450 most people would never throw someone out like trash. 0:21:51.550 --> 0:21:53.850 There are only four ways you could get rid of 0:21:53.870 --> 0:21:57.870 the dead, right? Air, fire, water, and earth. So you 0:21:57.890 --> 0:22:00.030 bury them in the earth, you burn them with fire, 0:22:00.050 --> 0:22:02.370 you throw them in water, or you leave them in 0:22:02.390 --> 0:22:05.670 the air. So all of these have been done. 0:22:06.630 --> 0:22:09.750 The place of the dead has always mattered. Starting in 0:22:09.770 --> 0:22:12.130 the 8th century, to be a church was to have 0:22:12.200 --> 0:22:13.000 the body of a martyr. 0:22:13.510 --> 0:22:14.350 Or a relic from one. 0:22:15.370 --> 0:22:17.830 And the worst fate imaginable for the faithful was to 0:22:17.870 --> 0:22:21.100 not be buried near them in the churchyard. Then, of course, 0:22:21.140 --> 0:22:26.180 there's the public cemetery, cremation, open caskets, scattering ashes in 0:22:26.200 --> 0:22:26.540 the river. 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:29.940 The general point is that no one throws them away. 0:22:33.060 --> 0:22:35.560 To Diane and Kurt Horning, it seemed like the city 0:22:35.660 --> 0:22:38.930 was doing just that, throwing away the remains of their 0:22:38.970 --> 0:22:44.540 son in a landfill. In the best-case scenario, WTC families 0:22:44.590 --> 0:22:47.660 wanted the fines taken out of Fresh Kills, moved to 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:51.600 Ground Zero, and incorporated into the memorial there. If that 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:56.640 wasn't possible, WTC families had other suggestions. Governor's Island. Or 0:22:56.680 --> 0:22:58.500 maybe a section of Fresh Kills that was not on 0:22:58.540 --> 0:23:03.240 top of garbage. In 2004, the city finally said outright, 0:23:03.920 --> 0:23:07.640 the fines would not be moved from Fresh Kills. I 0:23:07.740 --> 0:23:11.900 asked Dennis Diggins about this. To me, it seemed logistically challenging. 0:23:12.350 --> 0:23:14.250