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september 11 memorial
America is remembering the victims of the 9/11 attacks in a series of memorials marking the 12th anniversary.
The 9/11 attacks killed 2,977 people in New York, the Washington DC area and Pennsylvania.
In New York, families of the victims read the names of each person who died at the World Trade Center.
President Barack Obama was set to attend a memorial outside the Pentagon, but no speeches have been planned by politicians.
The attacks led to a long war in Afghanistan and created an expansion of government surveillance powers that have recently been the subject of intense debate.
A separate memorial was held outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, honoring the passengers and crew of United Flight 93. They struggled with the hijackers of the plane, preventing it from hitting its intended target, believed to be the White House or the US Capitol building.
All 33 passengers and seven crew members on the flight were killed after the plane crashed into a field about 75 miles south-east of Pittsburgh.
“No matter how many years pass, this time comes around each year, and it’s always the same,” Karen Hinson, who lost her brother, Michael Wittenstein, in New York, told the Associated Press news agency. His body was never found.
America is remembering the victims of the 9-11 attacks in a series of memorials marking the 12th anniversary
More than 1,000 people gathered on Wednesday at the National September 11 memorial plaza in New York City to read the names of all those killed in the 2001 and 1993 attacks on the building.
Bagpipes and a youth choir began the proceedings, held around two reflecting pools that stand in the footprint of the destroyed towers.
“To my nephew Michael Joseph Mullin, we miss you and think of you every single day,” said one of the 250 people chosen to read names, many of them family members of the victims.
“You’re gone but not forgotten,” another woman said of her lost cousin.
The reading was paused for several moments of silence, including 8:46 local time, when the first plane hit the North Tower; when the second plane hit the South Tower; when each building fell; and when the third and fourth planes hit the Pentagon and the field outside Shanksville.
A number of other cities held memorial services on Wednesday.
Builders are meanwhile putting the finishing touches to the new World Trade Center tower and a museum dedicated to the attacks.
One World Trade Center is now the tallest building in the Western hemisphere, its spire reaching to 1,776ft, a symbolic number alluding to the year of the US Declaration of Independence.
On Tuesday, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for what will be a visitor centre on the site of the Flight 93 national memorial park.
The building, expected to open in late 2015, will be broken in two where the plane flew overhead. Visitors have already left 35,000 tributes at the site.
Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, in which 19 hijackers also died when they seized control of four planes, crashing three of them into their intended targets.
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President Barack Obama has marked the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, saying the US emerged “even stronger” from that day’s death and horror.
In New York, relatives are reading out the names of those killed when hijacked jets were crashed at the World Trade Center, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Barack Obama laid a wreath at the Pentagon and Vice-President Joe Biden is expected to speak at Shanksville.
For the first time, politicians will not address the ceremony in New York.
At the Pentagon, Barack Obama addressed survivors of the attacks and relatives of those killed. He told them their loved ones would never be forgotten, and that the dead had “helped us make the America we are today”.
“The true legacy of 9/11 will not be one of fear or hate or division,” Barack Obama said.
“It will be a safer world, a stronger nation, and a people more united than ever before.”
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum announced in July that this year’s ceremony at Ground Zero would include only relatives reading victims’ names.
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum announced in July that this year's ceremony at Ground Zero would include only relatives reading victims' names
Memorial President Joe Daniels said that, in an election year, it was “honoring the victims and their families in a way free of politics”.
Charles Wolf, whose wife Katherine was killed at the World Trade Center, said the absence of elected officials would make the event more intimate for the families.
“We’ve gone past that deep, collective public grief,” he said.
Tuesday dawned with a clear blue sky over Washington and New York, jogging memories of a similar September morning 11 years ago.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day in attacks by al-Qaeda members who had hijacked four airliners.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama observed a moment of silence at the White House at 08:45.
They then headed to the Pentagon to attend a memorial ceremony there, where one of the jets crashed, and then visit wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
With a US election looming in November, President Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney have set aside campaigning for the day and will not run negative advertisements.
Mitt Romney was due to visit Reno, Nevada, to address a National Guard unit whose members were deployed as part of the US response to the attacks.
“On this most sombre day, those who would attack us should know that we are united, one nation under God, in our determination to stop them and to stand tall for peace and freedom at home and across the world,” Mitt Romney said in a written statement.
Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar were due to speak at the Flight 93 National Memorial, near Shanksville, where one of the jets crashed as passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers.
A 9/11 museum in New York was due to have been completed for the 11th anniversary but has been plagued by setbacks.
Officials say it will take at least another year to finish.
A new building – the $3.9 billion One World Trade Center – is due to open in 2014 on the north-west corner of Ground Zero.
Last year an outdoor memorial was opened at the site and has since been visited by almost 4.5 million people.
In the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, the US launched a campaign to destroy the al-Qaeda network headed by Osama Bin Laden.
A team of elite US troops killed the al-Qaeda chief in a raid on his Pakistani compound last year.
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The National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center is an awesome spectacle that moved and inspired some 4.5 million visitors in its first year.
But all that magnificence comes with a jaw-dropping price tag. The foundation that runs the memorial estimates that once the $700 million project is complete, the memorial and museum will together cost $60 million a year to operate.
The anticipated cost has bothered some critics and raised concerns even among the memorial’s allies that the budget may be unsustainable without a hefty government subsidy.
By comparison, the National Park Service budgeted $8.4 million this year to operate and maintain Gettysburg National Military Park and $3.6 million for the monument that includes the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. Running Arlington National Cemetery, which has more than 14,000 graves and receives 4million visitors a year, costs $45 million annually.
The foundation that runs 9-11 memorial estimates that once the $700 million project is complete, the memorial and museum will together cost $60 million a year to operate
Officials at the 9/11 memorial say they face unique challenges that make comparisons to other national memorials difficult.
The foundation plans to spend at least a fifth of its operating budget, or around $12 million per year, on private security because of terrorism fears. Visitors to the memorial plaza pass through airport-like security, and armed guards patrol the grounds.
“The fact of the matter is that this was a place that was attacked twice,” said Joseph Daniels, the foundation’s president and chief executive.
Just operating the two massive fountains that mark the spots where the twin towers once stood will cost another $4.5 million to $5 million annually, according to a spokesman.
Foundation officials have refused to answer to requests for information about other costs at the site, including the anticipated expense of running the museum, which is still unfinished.
The museum was supposed to open this month, but construction all but ceased a year ago because of a funding squabble between the foundation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land the memorial sits on.
Joseph Daniels said it will take at least a year for the museum to open once construction resumes, meaning the site may not be fully complete until at least 2014.
The failure to open the museum on time has thrown off the foundation’s financial planning. Officials had expected to use the museum, being built mostly with money from various government agencies, plus private donations, as its main source of revenue.
While visitors will be allowed into the above-ground portions of the memorial for free, the foundation plans to charge people to descend into the museum’s exhibition space, where they will see portraits of the nearly 3,000 victims, hear oral histories of the tragedy and view artifacts such as the staircase World Trade Center workers used to flee on 9/11.
The admission price hasn’t been set. Foundation officials say they may also charge a ‘suggested donation’ where visitors would be allowed to enter for free but would be strongly encouraged to pay.
But if the museum gets the 2 million visitors a year the foundation expects, a $12 fee, like the one charged at the memorial to the victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, would cover 40% of the operating costs. More money will be generated through fundraising and the sale of memorabilia.
In addition, the foundation and several elected officials have proposed that the American public pick up one-third of the operating costs.
So far, Congress has balked. A bill proposed by Hawaii’s Senator Daniel Inouye that would have had the National Park Service contribute $20 million per year ran into opposition from Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who pointed out that the federal government had already spent $300 million on the project.
A National Park Service official testified at a hearing that $20 million is more than the agency can afford, and larger than the entire annual appropriation for nearly 99% of the parks in its system.
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The first pictures of the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero have been revealed before the 10th anniversary on Sunday.
Ground Zero, the site which people once associated with death, devastation and abject terror has now turned, after 10 years, into a place of peace, tranquillity and sadness.
National 9/11 Memorial: view from the south pool waterfall with Freedom Tower in the background
Starting with Sunday, September 11, 2011, Ground Zero – once a black hole of despair – will become known as the National September 11th Memorial.
On the places where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre once stood now lies two granite pools in its footprints with waterfalls cascading 30 feet (about 10 meters) below.
National 9/11 Memorial: view of Ground Zero from Washington Street
The one-acre size pools sprawl out across the World Trade Center plaza – one to signify each fallen tower.
The pools are bordered by bronze panels inscribed by the names of all those who perished at the hands of terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, at the Pentagon, in New York and in Pennsylvania; when night time falls, the panels will be backlit to shine against the void.
400 swamp white trees line the plaza and a small clearing known as the Memorial Glade is set aside for special ceremonies, according to the New York Post.
National 9/11 Memorial: Freedom Tower, One World Trade Centre building
A navy-blue flag adorned with 40 gold stars to represent the passengers and crew members who died on United Airlines Flight 93 billows high above the site.
A white ring encircles around an image of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre to form the shape of a pentagon to honour the 184 who perished both at the Pentagon and aboard American Airlines Flight 77.
The Twin Towers, standing in the centre of the flag with the numbers nine and 11 and the words ‘we remember’ represents the thousands who perished on the morning of September 11 when two planes crashed into the buildings.
The 9/11 Memorial’s designer, Michael Arad, was a young, little-known architect whose plan was selected out of 5,200 proposals.
“These two acre-sized voids are like a moment of silence and what we do with that moment of silence depends on us. We just want to make sure everything is done very carefully. We’re building for the ages,” Michael Arad told CBS.
National 9/11 Memorial: North Pool at Ground Zero
Joe Daniels, president of the National 9/11 Memorial told the New York Post:
“We remember the towers standing, the towers falling, the devastation on the pile, the empty pit.
“And to move to a place of grace and beauty is something that the entire country can feel proud of.”
The National Memorial opens to the 9/11 families on Sunday and to the public on Monday. Visitors must reserve visitor passes in advance on the memorial’s Website, 911memorial.org.
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