Schwarz
View current page
...more recent posts
Hundreds of pieces of mail destined for the former trade center still arrive every day at a post office facing ground zero -- the relics of the unfinished lives of Sept. 11 victims.
Telephone bills, insurance statements, wine club announcements, college alumni newsletters, even government checks populate the bundles of mail. Each bears the ZIP code once reserved exclusively for the twin towers: 10048.
''I guess sooner or later they'll realize the towers aren't back up,'' said letter carrier Seprina Jones-Sims, who handles the trade center mail. ''I don't know when.''
Some of the nation's most recognizable companies and organizations, from retailers to research hospitals, are among those sending the mail. Much of it seems to result from businesses not updating their bulk mailing lists, said U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Pat McGovern.
The postal service declined to identify the senders and recipients of the letters according to policy. Several companies formerly housed in the towers also declined comment.
The trade center mail meets varied fates once it arrives at the Church Street station.
A handful of companies pay for a service that forces the post office to hold the mail until a messenger picks it up. The rest of the mail travels various routes. Some will be returned to the sender, some will be forwarded to the company's current address and some will be sent to a Brooklyn recycling firm to be destroyed.
That the Postal Service is even forwarding mail from a nonexistent address five years later is rare. ''Normally we'd only forward mail for a year, but we're making an exception here,'' McGovern said.
The trade center's mail used to travel from the Church Street post office and up through the towers. It would start on the ground tucked in the letter carrier's bag and continue up higher and higher -- to the 68th floor, the 89th floor, the 104th floor.
The morning's mail never made it through the flames and smoke on Sept. 11, 2001. It stayed put with the letter carriers, who silently observed the chaos that unfurled outside the post office.
Flying debris blew out most of its windows. After a three-year restoration, its doors officially reopened in August 2004.
Rafael Feliciano delivered mail to floors 78 through 100 of the south tower for three years. He watched the tower collapse on television from a bar several blocks away with a co-worker.
''He turned to me and said, 'You just lost your route,''' Feliciano recalled. When the dust cleared, he spent weeks identifying office workers who came to pick up their mail, searching for familiar faces to see if they had survived.