WTC
Victims May Have Been 'Vaporized'
By Richard Pyle
Associated Press Writers
Tuesday, December 4, 2001; 2:21 PM
NEW YORK –– Three months after the World
Trade Center attack, victims' families are being
forced to face the ghastly possibility that many of
the dead were "vaporized," as the medical
examiner put it, and may never be identified.
So far, fewer than 500 victims have been
positively identified out of the roughly 3,000 feared
dead. Sixty were identified solely through DNA.
The city and state have allowed victims' families
to obtain death certificates without proof of a body,
but many families place great importance on an ID
based on actual remains.
"Until you have something tangible, you just
keep hoping – maybe there'll be some sort of
miracle," said Jeanne Maurer, whose 31-year-old
daughter, Jill Campbell, is presumed dead. "You
can't accept it until you have something.
"I still say, 'My daughter's missing,'"
Maurer said.
Many victims will undoubtedly be identified.
Nearly 10,000 body parts have been pulled from the
mountains of mangled metal and matchstick-size
splinters at ground zero.
But Dr. Charles Hirsch, the chief medical
examiner, triggered an angry response two weeks ago
when he told grieving relatives that many bodies
– no one is sure how many – had been
"vaporized" and were beyond identification.
Hirsch declined to be interviewed. But spokeswoman
Ellen Borakove said he meant that bodies were
consumed by blazing fuel from the two crashed
airliners, or "rendered
into dust" when the 1,100-foot
skyscrapers collapsed, one concrete slab floor onto
another. ***