The discovery of human bones in a damaged manhole at the World Trade Center site has outraged victims' families, who say the city hasn't done enough to ensure the remains of those killed in the 2001 terrorist attack are located and treated with respect.
Some relatives called for a new, systematic search by outside experts, such as the military command that identifies missing soldiers' remains.
"We can no longer rely on accidental discoveries," the group WTC Families for Proper Burial said in a statement Thursday. "This must be a deliberate search. May this awful news be the catalyst needed to go back and do the job well."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg called an emergency meeting at City Hall on Friday to discuss what "what else we should go look at and why this wasn't discovered five years earlier." Bloomberg said the city planned to scour the site again for remains, examining other manholes and areas that might have been overlooked.
The latest remains, some as big as arm or leg bones, were found Thursday by a Port Authority contractor working with a Consolidated Edison crew excavating a manhole, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site.
The crew had already hauled excavated materials to a work center, and more remains were later found there, said Con Ed spokesman Mike Clendenin.
The area where the remains were found is near the spot where a podium is erected each Sept. 11 for families to read the names of their loved ones. It was roped off after the discover, and investigators began sifting through the dirt under a white tarp.
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