This day belongs to America...

AFTER a decade of delays and controversy over an ever-expanding budget, the 9/11 Memorial opened on Sunday, on the tenth anniversary of the attacks.

The $700m project is an eight-acre urban park at Ground Zero. The holes left by the twin towers have been turned into 31,000sq ft pools filled with water. Imposing bronze panels wrap around the pools, featuring the names of nearly 3,000 victims who died that day.

On its opening day, the park was closed to the public to accommodate the official memorial ceremony – an invitation-only event. Families of those who died sobbed and held one another as the names of their loved ones were read out. Speeches by dignitaries including President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden and former President George W Bush were rolled out across the nation by television cameras.

But noticeably absent from the event were the emergency services personnel who pulled many of the bodies from the wreckage. They were told by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that there was not enough room for them.

The decision has outraged many across the nation, including Jack Dewan Jr, a Baltimore firefighter and the nephew of Gerard “Gerry”

Dewan, who died on 9/11. Along with graduate student Darci Jenkins, 23, he has created a petition protesting the mayor’s decision on the website change.org. So far, it has collected more than 5,000 signatures.

Like millions around the world, Mr Dewan watched in horror and disbelief the television images of the twin towers collapsing. For his family, that unforgettable moment was the start of a long ordeal to find, identify and bury the remains of his uncle.

His uncle’s firehouse, Ladder 3, in Greenwich Village, was one of the closest to the World Trade Center. “When the first tower came down, I was thinking, ‘There’s a 50-50 shot here’,” said Mr Dewan, 31. “When the second tower came down, there was a disassociation.

I thought, ‘There’s no way he’s going to survive that’.”

Gerry Dewan, a 35-year-old bachelor, was “full of life”, according to his nephew. “He was a marathon runner and was always in the gym,” he said. “We used to joke that he should have been on the cover of GQ magazine. He had a ton of friends and he had girls flocking around him all the time.”

As a grieving relative, Mr Dewan, of Baltimore, was invited to attend the ceremony. He declined, instead electing to spend the day with his uncle’s former colleagues at their firehouse.

RETIRED police detective Michael Saxe, 42, was among those who conducted the 9/11 search and rescue effort. As a board member of the New York State Fraternal Order of Police, he also helped provide counselling and support to more than 20,000 officers, many of whom were at Ground Zero that day. Many still suffer from long-term health conditions, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder and lung problems brought on by exposure to contaminated air at the site.

“We would go in and dig and we got as far as we could get and we would go into solid steel,”

he said. “It was hot because there were fires burning underneath us. You would work as long as you possibly could.

“You were exhausted, you were drenched, your eyes were getting scratched from the stuff in the air. You would stumble over to the medical site and they would hook you up and give you some fluids. They would bandage up your hands, because we were ripping our nails off – we were doing anything we could to get to anybody.

Then you would go back in again for as long as you could do it.”

Mr Saxe spent yesterday with his family remembering his colleagues, Stephen Driscoll and Joseph Vigiano, who died trying to save others during 9/11. While he understands the space and safety concerns, he said tickets could have been allocated to some first responders under a lottery system, and they should take priority over many of the dignitaries.

“This day belongs to America,” he said. “It doesn’t belong to the politicians and it certainly doesn’t belong to Mayor Bloomberg.”

The mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comments.

Many New Yorkers were angered by the decision to exclude emergency services personnel, having witnessed first-hand the conditions they were exposed to. Imad Khachan, 45, owns The Chess Forum, in Greenwich Village. For nearly two months after the attack, he delivered food and supplies to those who worked at the site. While the general public rallied to provide whatever they could, suitable safety equipment was in short supply.

“All the streets looked like a bazaar,” he said.

“It was one volunteer stall after another. There was nothing to give to the firefighters except basic surgical masks. Dogs would go in the rubble and burn their feet, so one thing people were donating were dog shoes which they were stitching out of fabric.

“School kids were donating jam and peanut butter sandwiches, and each one handed a letter to the firefighters.”

MR Khachan, a Muslim who moved to the US from Lebanon in 1995, was spat at in the street after the attacks because of his ethnicity. “During the first couple of days there was real fear,” he said. “People thought lynch mobs would be coming to people’s homes.”

But he said that the tragedy also created a sense of community in a city known for its indifference.

“It was a call to action,” said Mr Khachan. “After this tragedy, people came together.

If you happened to be there, whoever you were, whatever religion you were, you were dead. Anyone who survived it was just by dumb luck.”