When Mayor Rudy Giuliani decided, three weeks ago, to reduce the number of firefighters assisting in the recovery at the World Trade Center, firefighters protested. They felt that the recovery of the $200 million worth of gold and silver might have had something to do with the scale back. And that the mayor was cutting costs and not respecting the dead.
I have no desire to lessen the effect of the devastating loss of life at the WTC. However, the most devastating effect of those attacks isn’t the loss of life; many more people die each day from hunger and other diseases. Surely they are as “innocent” as the people who perished on September 11. The most devastating effect of September 11 is that it rocked our society at its core, a society that is based on profit. People stopped flying on airlines and going on vacations, and generally became sub-par consumers.
Firefighters also felt that their continued presence was about “honour and dignity.” One stated, “We have to bring our 250 brothers back.” They were alarmed that the scaled back human presence at the site meant more clean-up conducted with heavy machinery. The city responded to criticism by saying there were safety issues involved with having so many people at the site.
It is shocking, but there is a credible argument that recovery of the gold prompted the scale back. October 30 the Mayor announced the scale back. The very next day he announced that the gold had been recovered. Surely, the “safety issues” existed on September 12 and every day after the disaster. It’s reasonable to expect that the rescuers and the government might ignore potential safety problems in hopes of rescuing any survivors but by October 11, perhaps even earlier, most reasonable experts would agree that there was little, if any, chance of this happening.
Why did the Mayor institute the scale back at this point? If nothing else the time between the discovery and the scale back are alarming. Especially when these “safety problems” must have existed well before. Nonetheless, I do not find it surprising. We live in a capitalist society. It is reasonable for the mayor to want to recover the gold. It did disrupt the gold markets until it was discovered and it did pose a security risk, being worth 200 million dollars. What I find amazing is the fact that the firefighters were surprised that recovering the gold was such a high priority. I guess they hadn’t heard it has always been about the money.
