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player ready...“The reality is setting in that he is gone,” said Hanniford, 29, who witnessed Tuesday’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center from his midtown Manhattan office.
“I’m not going to kid anyone. There’s no more hope. He was on the 105th floor.”
Carrying 32-year-old Kevin Hanniford’s dental records, his brother and their father waited with thousands of other relatives and friends to file a seven-page form with authorities and to pore over lists of the injured or dead in the basement of an old armory on Manhattan’s East Side. The building is the clearinghouse for family information.
Patrick Hanniford said he hoped only to recover his brother’s remains.
“You’ve got to bury something,” he said, “just for closure.”
Yet even though the death toll far exceeds the number of survivors plucked from the wreckage, others in the long waiting lines said they continued to cling to the hope that their loved ones are alive, perhaps in a hospital or trapped under the rubble.
That hope sustained them as they waited for up to five hours to examine hospital lists of injured survivors.
Intimate revelations
Some sought out television camera operators and newspaper reporters to show photos of the missing. Others papered trees, phone booths, shop windows and telephone poles with flyers, some divulging intimate but distinctive details about the missing: a “rather hairy body” and “small cartoon character [possibly Tweetie bird] on right buttock.”
Steven Morello Jr. and his two sisters were searching for their father. Steven Morello, a 53-year-old office manager, worked on the 93rd floor of One World Trade Center, the northern of the twin towers and the first struck by a hijacked jetliner on Tuesday.
His children, like most of those who came to the armory, left disappointed.
“It didn’t seem like a lot of people got answers,” said the junior Morello, 32.
“I didn’t see any joyful faces. The lists seem very small. It didn’t take three minutes to look through the pile” of survivors’ names, he said, tears streaming down his face.
The process at the armory was long and painful. Before families could check the list of survivors, they had to register their missing person and fill out a seven-page form designed to aid identification.
Authorities also asked whom to contact for a DNA sample, “if it comes to that,” said a grim Morello.
After completing and handing in the form, people received a case number that entitled them to stand in another line.
It led to the armory’s basement, where detectives, seated at tables, scanned the slim, stapled, alphabetized lists–the confirmed dead and hospitalized survivors.
Chaplains of many faiths stood by to counsel or comfort the grieving and the dazed.
While waiting under a hot, late summer sun, the families of the missing passed the time together, quietly trading stories of their dispiriting and exhausting rounds of calling hospitals, hot lines, co-workers and morgues.
Almost invariably, conversations began with the now instantly understood question, “What floor?” Many of the missing seemed to have been on or above the 90th floors of the twin towers.
And there have been gut-wrenching mistakes. On Wednesday, a hospital worker called to tell the Morello family that Steven was alive. But the hospital soon called back with bitter news that the survivor they had was in fact named “Moreno.”
Moreover, apparently error-riddled lists of survivors posted on Internet sites have added to the chaos and the heartbreak.
A woman stood outside Bellevue Hospital, a few blocks away, sharing copies of one of the Internet lists with people who came to the hospital looking for the missing.
“Don’t give up,” said Maritza Castro of the Bronx, who said she learned that her brother was alive from such a Web site.
Castro admitted that she had not yet found him, because the Web site that listed him did not specify his location.
Castro argued with relatives of another missing person who argued that the site had been victimized by hackers.
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“It’s legit. I know,” Castro responded.
Internet pranks
At the armory a few hours later, some kin of the missing said police warned them that many of the lists circulating on the Internet were not accurate and contained cruel pranks.
To make best use of their time, extended families at the armory split the duties: one family member held a spot in line while another handed out flyers to reporters.
Some flyers were written in the first person–“Have you seen me? My name is Ira Zaslow”–or they spoke to the missing: “We are anxiously awaiting your arrival.”
Others sounded more like newspaper death notices, adding characteristics unlikely to help identify the injured: “devoted husband and father” and “very kind, compassionate and generous friend.”
Susan Stoltze said she passed out flyers at 26th Street and Lexington Avenue because her friend, whose husband is missing, was too distraught to talk but wanted her “to talk to as many reporters as I can.”
After having four television interviews by 2 p.m. Thursday, Stoltze advised another searcher on the proper approach.
“Tell them, `Can you take a picture of this, please, for me,'” she said. “That usually works for me.”
With a laptop computer and a scanner, Scott Beck of Manhattan collected photos and personal information from searchers in an Indian restaurant at 26th and Lexington. Beck said he planned to turn his database over to reporters or other interested media. He handed back a $20 bill that a woman left next to his computer.
He said he is compiling the information as a way to help.
A few feet from the restaurant, Jessica Bove of Long Island stood holding up a sign intended to encourage rescue workers.
It read: “You are our heroes. Please don’t give up.”
Bove said her cousin attended a Tuesday morning meeting on the 105th floor of one of the towers. He has not come home.
Yet she said, hope is “all we can have.”