Victims’ Families to Get Trade Center Dirt
The families of the more than 5,000 victims of the World Trade Center attack will each receive a wooden urn with dirt from the mass graveyard, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said as a court cleared the way for the first death certificates to be issued for the missing.
The mayor said the city settled on the idea after hearing reports that con men were peddling phony mementos from ground zero to family members.
In addition, a court declared 41 of the missing victims legally dead, acting at their families’ request.
The process of obtaining a death certificate for a missing person has been cut from a few years to a few days to help victims’ families.
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