"They started hauling the bodies out about 36 hours after the attack. A day and a half to let the fires burn, to sift through the rubble and ash that was once the citadel of American capitalism and was now the first battlefield of a new century's first war, just to begin the dreadful accounting, to begin clearing the dead off that battlefield."
"As Fortune readers receive this issue, that mood may well have begun to change again. For now the fresh graves are being prepared. Now the funerals have started. Now thousands and thousands of families are gathering to mourn unimaginable loss, and the images wash over us, again and again. Twenty-three thousand were killed or wounded at the battle of Antietam, but they were soldiers, not innocent civilians, and we did not watch their funerals on television, 24 hours a day."
Rescue and recovery at the World Trade Center began about 36 hours after the attack, as crews let fires burn and sifted through rubble before removing bodies. The national mood shifted from stunned terror to anger and thoughts of revenge, then toward mourning as funerals began and families grieved amid constant images. The civilian scale of loss contrasted with past battlefield casualties. The government, corporations, and institutions needed to confront how the country had been changed by a devastating terrorist attack. The post-1989 era of American frivolity was declared over after Sept. 11, 2001.
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