WILLIAM NEUMAN
Courtesy of The New York Post

Searchers at Ground Zero believe they are on the verge of discovering a significant number of bodies in the debris from the collapsed lobby of the World Trade Center's north tower.

"Now that we've worked our way down to those levels we're hoping that we'll have a lot more recoveries," said Port Authority Police Lt. John Ryan.

"We expect in the north tower area to find other people, in particular firemen and rescue workers and civilians," said Ryan, who oversees Port Authority cops working on the recovery effort.

"This week and the next three weeks, hopefully we'll be coming across a lot of the people that were lost."

The bodies of five Port Authority police officers were discovered Saturday in what was once the north tower's lobby - now sunk five floors below street level.

The body of an unidentified woman was found with them, strapped into a first aid chair they were using to carry her out of the building.

The cops and the woman were apparently just steps from escaping the tower when it collapsed.

The discovery has given heart to recovery workers who believe many other cops and firemen may have been about to leave the building when it came down.

Ryan said the Port Authority, the Fire Department and the NYPD have all tried to pinpoint areas where they believe their members were when the collapse occurred, based on interviews from survivors, radio communications at the time and other evidence.

"It's difficult to put a number on it. A lot of factors come into play," Ryan said. "There's the force of the building collapsing, you've got people aware the south tower collapsed and now they hear some other rumblings and maybe they're in the process of trying to get out."

But he cautioned that workers had been frustrated once already when they had hoped to find a large number of remains in what had been a staging area for rescuers near the Marriott Hotel - but found fewer bodies than they'd expected.

Ryan also said work has progressed in building tie-backs into the so-called bathtub wall, opening up new areas of north tower debris to be cleared away, and with it the potential for more remains to be found.

In other developments, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., charged with leading the rebuilding of the trade center site, moved into temporary offices yesterday on the 40th floor of One Liberty Plaza, overlooking Ground Zero.