WTC memorial to reopen to public after superstorm

The storm that claimed at least 40 lives in the city spared the core of the memorial that will again receive visitors on Tuesday morning: the reflective fountains ringed by the names of those who died in the terrorist attack.

"My worst fear on the night of the storm was, 'What was going to happen to the memorial, and the names that millions of people have come and touched?'" Joe Daniels, president of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, told The Associated Press.

As he walked through the memorial site late Monday afternoon — he called it "a sacred place" — Daniels pointed to a tree that miraculously had made it through the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and also survived the storm.

Also spared were 9/11 artifacts that are to be displayed in the museum still under construction — from a piece of the north tower's antenna to an elevator motor that once propelled workers into the skyscrapers.

When Daniels first entered the memorial last Tuesday, the morning after the worst of the storm devastated lower Manhattan, "the water was pouring in with force," he said, carrying huge pieces of wood and other debris along the south side of the memorial where visitors enter. Some screening facilities temporarily housed in a tent there also were damaged, he said.