Aug 23, 2008 8:18 pm US/Eastern
WTC Steel Beam Gets Biker Escort To Pa. Memorial
NEW YORK (AP) ―
The roar of 1,000 motorcycles accompanied a steel beam from the World Trade Center on Saturday as it traveled to Pennsylvania, where it will be part of a memorial to those who died there in a Sept. 11 airliner crash.
Hundreds of current and retired FDNY firefighters left Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field at about 7 a.m. to escort the girder on the 311-mile ride to Shanksville, Pa. The group arrived in Shanksville Saturday evening.
Once in place, in a new memorial being built next to a volunteer fire company, the 2-ton, 14-foot long beam will sit on a base shaped like the Pentagon.
The roar of 1,000 motorcycles accompanied a steel beam from the World Trade Center on Saturday as it traveled to Pennsylvania, where it will be part of a memorial to those who died there in a Sept. 11 airliner crash.
Hundreds of current and retired FDNY firefighters left Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field at about 7 a.m. to escort the girder on the 311-mile ride to Shanksville, Pa. The group arrived in Shanksville Saturday evening.
Once in place, in a new memorial being built next to a volunteer fire company, the 2-ton, 14-foot long beam will sit on a base shaped like the Pentagon.
"It's a great thing to honor the people on Flight 93 by putting together all three attack sites—the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and Pennsylvania," said Eugene Stolowski, a New York firefighter who was along for the trip.
Stolowski, who spoke with The Associated Press by mobile phone, said he searched for human remains at ground zero for months after the attacks.
The members of the New York City Fire Riders joined a larger group that included bikers from as far away as Georgia. The beam rode on a flatbed truck.
United Airlines Flight 93 was brought down by hijackers just outside Shanksville, about 40 minutes into its flight from Newark, N.J.
Organizers planned to unveil the steel beam in the new memorial during a ceremony Sunday morning. Relatives of some Sept. 11 victims were expected to attend.
Stolowski, with the FDNY's Rescue Company 3 in the Bronx, lives in Florida, N.Y., a town about 70 miles north of New York City. The 36-year-old said he started work at ground zero the day after the Sept. 11 attack and worked in the smoking pit almost every day through January.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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