What was striking about the rubble at the feet of the collapsed twin towers, was the small amount of debris. Two gigantic structures, each more than one hundred stories high, had come down, and yet there was only a few stories of rubble. In fact, there was very little concrete, and not a great deal of steel either. I realize that there were tons and thousands of truckloads of debris, but the collapsed structures did not provide what an intelligent person would have expected in terms of wreckage. What one might have expected to find in terms of overwhelming presence, was found in dust, not haulable wreckage.

This observation reminded me of something someone said to me, as we huddled in a storeway many years ago. The twin towers were under construction, and from high above, boards of lumber were being blown down on this New York City street. Everyone was running for cover and the police had stopped all traffic. The explosions of the crashing wood on the pavement, at unpredictable intervals, as well as the sounds of immense boards smashing into parked cars, was riveting. In the storeway with me was an unknown older gentleman. After I commented that the scene before us was not a good omen for a construction project, he said: “The buildings are mostly air.” After the towers had collapsed, I understood what he meant. More than thirty years ago, he was saying that these buildings were not being built properly. That they were being built for maximum rental space, not for safety, permanence, beauty or strength. And so, the wreckage which remained was small in volume.