Workers are set to begin clearing the last major debris from Ground Zero after installing a series of critical tiebacks in the wall behind the tangle of steel left from the destroyed Customs House, officials said yesterday.
Cranes are expected to begin pulling the massive steel beams out of the pile of wreckage below Vesey Street on Monday, according to Peter Rinaldi, the Port Authority’s lead engineer at the site.
The area is called “the doughnut” because pieces falling from the north tower punched a hole in the middle of the nine-story building all the way to the trade center basement.
The building, which stood on the north side of the complex, was known as 6 World Trade Center.
Rinaldi said the last tieback, intended to stabilize a “bathtub” wall that contained the basement, was installed yesterday.
It takes three days for the cement grouting to harden and the tiebacks can be tested Sunday. If the grouting has set, debris removal can begin.
The tiebacks were placed along the lower portion of the bathtub wall, inside a PATH train tube that runs below the Customs House wreckage.
Recovery crews will search for more human remains when they remove the debris – but that area is considered dangerous for them because it is extremely unstable.
One worker at the site said there is tension between construction workers and the firemen and policemen who are looking for remains.
“They want to jump in as soon as we remove something, but it’s very dangerous,” the source said.
Crews were also working yesterday to install tiebacks by the pile of debris that once formed a truck ramp out of the site.
Once they are in place, that debris, all that is left of the south tower, will be cleared within days.
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These names were added yesterday to the medical examiner’s list of confirmed dead in the World Trade Center attacks:
Victor Daniel Barbosa, 23; Nina Patrice Bell, 39; Edward Frank Beyea, 42; James Joseph McAlary, 42; Michael E. McHugh, 35; Richard Todd Myhre, 37; Alfred Todd Rancke, 42; Wendy L. Small, 26; Yoichi Sugiyama, 34; Siu Cheung Wong, 34.