Last Standing Piece of WTC Saved

By LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - The last standing piece of the World Trade Center towers - a seven-story twisted metal ruin that has come to symbolize the terrorist attacks - will be carefully removed and saved for possible use in a memorial.

``We're going to preserve as much of that wall as possible,'' Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (news - web sites) said Tuesday.

The remnants of the south tower - the one struck by the second jetliner and the first to collapse - have been captured in scores of photos of ground zero since the Sept. 11 attack on the twin 110-story towers.

Demolition began late Tuesday. Removal of the tower will also make cleanup efforts safer and easier, the mayor said.

Earlier, as New Yorkers voted in primaries for his replacement, Giuliani encouraged residents to move beyond the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and get on with life.

``Life is risky,'' he said. ``You can decide to live your life afraid of that happening, or you can decide to live your life the way Americans live their lives, which is unafraid. There's no reason to have this increased fear.''

Giuliani's comments came as workers started a third week of digging through the ruins of the twin towers and as the families of the more than 6,000 victims began receiving help in paying their bills.

The mayor cited statistics showing that violent crime has plunged in the two weeks since the terrorist attack. New York is now the safest large city in America, the mayor said.

The attack on the trade center was ``a once-in-our-history incident,'' Giuliani said.

The mayor also said a regulation is being considered to bar single-occupant passenger cars from entering the city to cut down on traffic, beginning Thursday. A final decision on which bridges and tunnels would be affected should come Wednesday, he said.

Preserving the ruined tower as a memorial was suggested by Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and by John Tierney in his column Tuesday in The New York Times: ``It's the building hanging on, still refusing to fall, just like New Yorkers.''

In Oklahoma City, granite salvaged from the bombed Alfred P. Murrah federal building (news - web sites) in 1995 was used in a memorial to the 168 victims. Also, Berlin, London and Hiroshima have erected monuments from wartime debris.