New York - Paul Graham was within minutes of missing his flight home last week.

After four frigid hours in a viewing platform line, the Minneapolis resident said he would rather reschedule a flight than miss his chance to stare at the stretches of tearful remembrance and glimpse at the sand pit in downtown Manhattan.

Years ago, he saw World Trade Center towers that scraped the sky at 1,350 feet.

This time, he wanted to see the rocky remains - the posters of missing people, the burning candles, the children’s handprints and misspelled wishes for happiness and the rubble of seven buildings.

“You know what to expect from pictures, but pictures don’t show the whole impact,” he said, looking for warmth under his winter clothing near a collection of red, white and blue memorial signs. “It helps you to see if one can put himself in a position to appreciate the magnitude of the events.”

Graham was one person making up the six-block line that wound around Ground Zero after a public viewing platform opened New Year’s Eve.

City officials are considering opening more platforms similar to the 13-foot-high structure.

But the site that greets tourists and sympathizers bears little resemblance to the 110-story towers that stood there months earlier.

The scraps of metal and shards of glass that lay there just weeks earlier are gone too.

“There are no standing structures,” said Matthew Monahan, spokesman for New York’s Department of Design and Construction. “It’s the buildings with deeper foundations that they’re literally emptying out. It looks a bit more like a few smoldering holes.”

Although seven buildings were taken down to the ground or below by the end of 2001, the recovery effort is expected to last another five to eight months.

About 965,000 tons of debris were taken to the Fresh Kill landfill on Staten Island, where FBI officials comb through the structural mess for criminal evidence or human remains.

“The priority continues to be the discovery and respectful removal of remains,” Monahan said. “That has never changed.

“What’s seen is not always what has happened. Our numbers on a given day are not reflective of the one flag-wearing coffin on TV.”

City officials say the death toll will likely be around 3,000 when the site recovery is complete.

“It looks different every day,” New York police Officer Frank DeMasi said. “If we start having really cold weather, it could take a lot longer. You’ve got to be layered up. This part of New York is known for its freezing winters and whipping winds.

“It’s going to be scary when we stop working and things get back to normal. Then I’ll really have to think about it.”

DeMasi, who is part of the Emergency Service Squad, has worked at least 72 hours a week since Sept. 11.

Fourteen of the 23 dead police officers came from his unit. About 375 officers out of New York’s 40,000 officers belong to the squad.

“You start playing in your head all the decisions that let you be here today,” DeMasi said. “If you hadn’t done this, you would’ve done that, and all those people who did are dead now. We do train for stuff similar to this - but not this.

“It’s such a small unit - it makes it tough when you all know each other.”

As demolition and digging continue at the site, new traces of what used to be somebody’s boss, neighbor, sister or baby sitter keep appearing. From the viewing platform, the police officers, firefighters and contractors working on the site are little more than dots of color on a scorched black and sandy brown backdrop.

The tinkling of broken glass resounds from the distance - it’s easy to hear when there are only solemn whispers on the platform.

Gary Parrish said the six-block line winding around Ground Zero’s viewing platform is reminiscent of his hometown of Memphis, Tenn., where people flock to the Lorraine Hotel, the site of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.

“Any place where tragedies occur become a tourist attraction,” Parrish said. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s true. It says a lot about people.

“It’s the same with Times Square - you do it because you have to say you’ve done it.”

But for some people, the site is more than a tourist attraction or a memorial.

Its recovery is a way of life.

After working for the New York Fire Department for less than a year, Mike D’Angelo is waiting to hear when he’ll be promoted from emergency medical technician to firefighter - just like his father and several other family members.

With the increased need for help and the loss of more than 300 firefighters, most young employees aren’t forced to wait to for promotions.

He said he’s ready for the intense shifts. He’s not worried about how he’ll react if he finds the body of a lost colleague.

Even after a trip to the hospital Sept. 11 and 26-straight hours of work, he wanted to get back to work - and site recovery is just part of the job.

“I knew I wanted to do this when all these other guys wanted to be lawyers and stockbrokers,” D’Angelo said. “You cannot put me in a room with a desk and a cubicle - I’ll be kicking the walls out.

“For five days after it happened, I was on my hands and knees digging. I didn’t want to leave for a few days.

“You have to remember it didn’t look like it does now.”

Jamie Gumbrecht can be reached at gumbrec1@msu.edu.