On Thursday, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in charge of organizing a ‘Tribute in Light’ memorial display in New York City honoring the victims of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack announced cancelling the installation over coronavirus (COVID-19)-related concerns, as the US experiences the highest number of infections and deaths in the world.
A ‘Tribute in Light’ memorial display in New York City honoring the victims of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, is going to take place, despite earlier plans to cancel the annual installation over coronavirus-related concerns, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in charge of organizing the display said in a statement on Saturday.
Greenwald expressed gratitude to the chairman of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Mike Bloomberg, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for “their assistance in offsetting the increased costs associated with the health and safety considerations around the tribute this year”.
Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York City, said in a Saturday statement that he would be happy to see the Tribute in Light shining this year “as a beacon of our city’s resilience”.
In the meanwhile, Governor Cuomo stated that commemorating the victims of the 9/11 attack would be “especially important”, as New Yorkers are “once again called upon to face a common enemy” – the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed 23,621 people in the state as of Saturday.
Earlier in the day, Frank Siller, CEO of the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, participating in the commemoration of 9/11 victims, told the ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ cable television show that the organization would see that the Tribute in Light memorial display was held, despite challenges brought about by the ongoing pandemic.
Siller suggested that “It’s not so hard” to ensure the safety of the stagehands and electricians who set up the display.
The Wall Street Journal reported that there would be about 40 workers required to work the event.
Tunnel to Towers will read aloud of the names of the victims, with the participation of the victims’ families, at Liberty and Church streets, the site of the former World Trade Center. The tradition was held there before the 9/11 memorial was constructed.
On Thursday, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum had announced via its website that the annual Tribute in Light beams “will not shine over lower Manhattan as part of this year’s 9/11 commemoration” because the “health risks during the pandemic were far too great for the large crew required to produce the annual Tribute in Light”.
On 11 September 2001, al-Qaeda* terrorists seized four passenger planes, crashing two of them into the World Trade Center in New York and another into the Pentagon. A fourth jet came down in a field in Pennsylvania after initially being directed toward Washington. A reported 2,997 people from 90 countries died as a result of the attacks.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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