800 September 11 victims unlikely to be identified, says medical examiner

ABOUT 800 September 11 victims are likely never to be identified, the New York City medical examiner's office has said.

About 2,000 of the 2,823 believed to have been killed on September 11 at the World Trade Center may be identified, Dr Charles A Hirsch said.

This is far beyond Mr Hirsch’s early hopes of identifying half of those killed when the Twin Towers collapsed after being hit by two hijacked airliners.

Last year, most experts believed only 25% of the victims would ever be identified.

“A number of those people don’t exist in any identifiable form,” Mr Hirsch said. “A number of samples we got from the World Trade Center or transferred from Fresh Kills were subjected to high heat which destroys DNA and time has passed and time destroys the compositions of the samples.”

Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island is where parts of the collapsed buildings of the World Trade Center were taken.

“As you recall, those fires burned for months afterward,” Mr Hirsch said, leaving many bone samples in ashes as if they had been cremated.

So far, 1,229 victims have been identified, or about 44%.

Dental X-rays, fingerprints and personal belongings were helpful for many of the positive identifications, but now Mr Hirsch and his staff rely mainly on DNA analysis.

They compare samples gathered to samples provided by the victim’s families. These samples were taken from personal articles such as hairbrushes or toothbrushes.

As remains were found at Fresh Kills, they were taken to the medical examiner’s office in Manhattan.

There will be no more samples delivered to the medical examiner from Fresh Kills, as it officially closes as a recovery site with a ceremony today.

Mr Hirsch said his office is identifying about 20 people per week. It will work to identify victims until about the end of this year.

Two new methods of DNA analysis are being employed by Mr Hirsch’s office and forensic scientists around the United States.

If they can lead to more identifications, work will be extended, he said. Those two methods are the analysis of “mitochondrial” DNA, which is inherited only from a person’s mother, and the “snip” method which attempts to piece together two strands of DNA in hopes that together the strands will be enough to lead to an identification.

There are about 19,700 samples on storage at the medical examiner’s offices and they will be saved for years in case breakthroughs in DNA research can provide answers, Mr Hirsch said.