Four years on, US mourns victims of 9/11
The roll of the lost began with Gordon M Aamoth Jr, an investment bank employee. Then, one after another, the names echoed across the site where the Twin Towers collapsed four years ago in a nightmarish cloud of dust and debris.
Relatives in the crowd bowed their heads and sobbed as speakers uttered brief, personal messages to brothers and sisters they had lost.
"You're still our hero, please keep watching over us," Elizabeth Ahearn said to her brother, fire lieutenant Brian Ahearn.
"Donald, there's not a day that goes by that we don't think about you," a sobbing Suzanne Gavagan Mascitis said to her brother, Donald Richard Gavagan Jnr, a 35-year-old bond trading firm employee.
As the names were read, weeping mourners filed down a ramp to a reflecting memorial pool at the floor of the 16-acre site, which remains virtually empty four years after the attack killed 2,749 people and tore a hole in the New York skyline. Families dropped red, orange and yellow roses in the still water, some shaking as they inscribed dedications on the edge of the pool.
The ceremony came as Hurricane Katrina left Americans once again struggling with a national catastrophe that has thousands dead and grieving.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened with words of condolence for those devastated by the terrorist bombings in the London Underground, and for the thousands of people devastated by Katrina.
"Today, as we recite the names of those we lost, our hearts turn as well toward London, our sister city, remembering those she has just lost as well," he said. "And to Americans suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, our deepest sympathies go out to you this day."
In New Orleans, firefighters from New York helping with the relief effort gathered around a makeshift memorial for their fallen comrades. At the service, a bell from a neighbouring church, its steeple wiped out by Katrina, was given to the New York firefighters.
The trade centre site fell silent at 8.46am, the time at which a hijacked jetliner crashed into the north tower, at 9:03am, the moment a second plane struck the south tower, and at 9:59am, when the south tower fell. A final moment of silence was planned for 10:29am, the precise time when the second tower collapsed.
Many relatives looked to the clear morning sky as they spoke to the brothers and sisters they lost.
"Kenny, your legacy of teacher, mentor, leader and coach did not die with you four years ago, but rather found new life and will live on forever," said Marie Cox to her brother, Kenneth Phelan, a firefighter and father of four.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice read a poem by Christina Rossetti after the second moment of silence. Governor George E Pataki also offered a commemorative reading, and former mayor Rudolph Giuliani also was to speak.
Other memorials included a Port Authority of New York and New Jersey service for the 84 employees it lost on September 11. Firefighters rolled out their trucks and other equipment in front of their firehouses. The New York Fire Department lost 343 firefighters in the attack. In Washington, US President George W Bush marked the anniversary with his wife on the south lawn. And in south-western Pennsylvania, a memorial service was planned in the field where Flight 93 crashed after it was hijacked by terrorists.
Parents and grandparents read the victims' names at Ground Zero last year, while children's voices were heard in 2003. A selection of politicians, relatives and others read the names on the first anniversary.
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