Final stage of towers clearance set to begin

The final stage of recovery work at Ground Zero is set to start next week as visitors continue to flock to the site.

Giant cranes will be used to clear cumbersome steel beams, the last major debris remaining from the World Trade Centre wreckage, from Monday morning, the New York Post reported.

The work was given the go-ahead after builders secured the remains of the nine storey Customs House, which stood just north of the Twin Towers and was also destroyed on September 11.

But as the excavation work scales down, the number of people visiting Ground Zero is increasing.

Ticket requests for the viewing platform have doubled in the last two months to 7,700 a day, city officials said.

They are now considering adding platforms and increasing opening times to meet demand, which is expected to increase further as the weather improves.

Tickets for last weekend were all issued in under three hours. Most visitors get just two to three minutes to view the site.

‘‘People are still incredibly moved,’’ said Kevin Kennon, one of the architects of the viewing ramp.

‘‘It looks more like a construction site now, but there’s something else there. We all need to bear witness to something this significant for ourselves.’’

New York tour companies have also started to include Ground Zero to satisfy requests from customers.

‘‘New Yorkers think it’s macabre, and at first I thought so also, until I actually started going with visitors and realising that they’re actually very respectful and very humble,’’ said John Pascale, president of NYC Tours Inc.

Recovery workers are said to be planning a ceremony to mark the end of the work, which is expected to be completed in May.

A 30ft steel column, once part of the south towers central core, will be the final piece to be removed in a special ‘‘last march out of the hole’’.

Workers have put a US flag on top of the column because it stands above an area where many bodies have been recovered, including several firefighters and police officers killed in the building’s lobby.