Families' painful search goes on

Hope of finding survivors is fading fast

Families searching for relatives feared lost in the rubble of the destroyed World Trade Center face an agonising process.

At the Armoury, two miles north of the disaster centre, lists are kept of the missing and the survivors.

Three lists detail those who are alive and which hospital they have been admitted to, those who have been seen but whose whereabouts are unknown and those whose status is unknown.

No one has heard from him. My biggest fear is that he stayed to help

Missing man's son

The information centre is full of lists and pictures with distraught relatives milling around.

Many come for regular updates after filling in the detailed seven-page questionnaire to register a missing relative.

The questions include blood type, shoe size, length of fingernails and specifics about each piece of clothing and jewellery worn that day.

Body parts

The information is needed as random body parts are often all that is initially found of some of the dead.

Relatives are told to keep toothbrushes and hairbrushes or anything that can furnish genetic material if a DNA test is needed.

Michael Wolfenson has taken on the burden of helping to search for his friend and neighbour Louis Inghilterra, who was working above the 90th floor in one of the towers.

He admitted the registration process was hard, saying: "This is at the point where Louis becomes a number and that was really tough to handle."

Rescue efforts

Another family is undertaking a particularly painful search for a worker at Lehman Brothers investment firm.

All the missing man's 617 colleagues in the 38th floor office made it out alive but none recall seeing him leave.

His son admitted it was possible he had stayed behind to help rescue efforts.

"No one has heard from him. My biggest fear is that he stayed to help.

"He's alive in our minds and we are going to find him."