Message #205273

[Victoria Liss]

Thick gray ash covered the streets near Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001. In the days that followed, many New Yorkers felt motivated to scoop up samples of the highly pulverized residue and save it in baggies and juice bottles and jars. They did it "not really knowing what it meant," said Jan Ramirez, curator of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, "yet sensing there was something almost nuclear about it that they felt they should save." (FDNY)