Trade Centre steel cross installed near 9/11 crash site

Hundreds of firefighters bowed their heads in prayer as a cross made out of steel from the World Trade Centre was dedicated near the site of the United Airlines Flight 93 crash on September 11 2001.

The two-ton, 14ft high cross sits on a concrete base shaped like the Pentagon at the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company in Pennsylvania, just a few miles from where the hijacked plane crashed into a field.

The cross made a 311-mile journey from Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday, accompanied by hundreds of motorcyclists, many of them current or retired New York firefighters.

“We wanted to find a home for this steel,” said Paddy Concannon, a retired lieutenant from the Fire Department of New York.

“This is an effort on our part to tie the three events together: the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and Shanksville.”

The cross is not part of the official £30.5m (€38.1m) Flight 93 National Memorial. That memorial will be built in phases and is expected to about 40% complete by the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks.

Shanksville Chief Terry Shaffer said the cross dedicated yesterday would serve as inspiration whenever his department responded to a call.

Gary Sims, a firefighter with New York’s Ladder 22, was among those in the motorcycle escort and said he took part “to help carry the word” of Flight 93. The crash killed the 40 passengers and crew members on board.

Flight 93, which was on its way from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, was the only one of the four planes hijacked that day that did not reach its intended target, believed to be in Washington DC.

Investigators believe the hijackers crashed the plane into a field near rural Shanksville, about 65 miles south east of Pittsburgh, as passengers rushed the cockpit.