US unites for day of remembrance

12 April 2012

Millions of people will attend memorials being held from sunrise to sunset across the US to commemorate the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

At daybreak in New York, firefighter and police pipe bands will begin marching from each of the city's five boroughs to the site of the World Trade Centre.

They will join victims' families and city leaders for a ceremony at Ground Zero where a minute silence will be held at 8.46am to mark the moment the first plane hit the World Trade Centre.

Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will then lead family members and a cross-section of New Yorkers, and people from around the world, in reciting the name of each victim of the twin towers attack.

Another moment of silence will be held at 10.29am, the time the second tower collapsed. Bells will ring in churches throughout the city to mark the end of the service.

Families of the dead will then be allowed to descend by a ramp to the lowest level of the seven-storey crater where the World Trade Centre stood to leave flowers to honour their loved ones.

George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Mark Sisk, the Bishop of New York, will lead a service at the nearby Trinity Church starting at 11am.

The Church was used as a base by emergency workers during the rescue and recovery operation. During the service the Lord Mayor of London, Michael Oliver, will present a commemorative bell to the church, recording the sympathy of the City of London with the people of New York.

In Washington victims' relatives will attend a closed service at the Pentagon starting at 9.30am, around the time the jet ploughed into the building.

They will later be taken on a tour of the building to see a memorial set up inside the US military headquarters close to impact point.

Thirty thousand people are expected to attend a ceremony at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the United flight 93, the fourth hijacked jet, crashed after passengers stormed the cockpit.

A bell will toll 44 times at the service, once for each victim.

President Bush is to visit the three attack sites during the day to pay his respects to the victims.

Elsewhere around the country, towns and communities will also mark the anniversary with special services and tributes.

Volunteers in San Francisco will unfurl artist Pop Zhao's five-mile long banner comprising 3,000 US flags and string it along the city's coastline.

In Houston, Texas, 5,000 people are expected at City Hall to place about 3,000 white carnations, one for every victim, in the Hermann Square Reflection Pool.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, 343 empty pairs of boots will stand at the firefighter memorial as a tribute to the comrades who died in the World Trade Centre.

In St Paul, Minnesota, police officers in patrol cars will pull over and face their cars to the East during the second minute silence.

At sunset in New York, heads of state from around the world will gather at a globe sculpture, which once stood between the twin towers and which has now been turned into a memorial in Battery Park, in the southern tip of Manhattan.

An eternal flame will then be lit and the city's Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, will conduct a reading.

As the sun goes down, candlelight vigils will be held across New York.

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