Sifting Through the Ashes for Victims

TOM KIRCHOFER
Associated Press

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) -- Five firefighters used trowels to sift ash and soot through a screen. They were searching for any signs a button, a badge, a body part that could lead them to the bodies of firefighters still buried in the charred ruins of an abandoned warehouse.

The task is dirty, grim and tedious: Behind the men was a 10-foot pile of soot still needing to be sifted.

All this takes place in the shadow of a building where six firefighters perished Friday. Only two bodies have been recovered.

Memories of the dead are worn with black ribbons by some workers at a site that has sprung to new life. A tent city has popped up in a commuter rail parking lot to support the 24-hour-a-day search.

The crisp blue and white tents give the area the look of a summer festival. But the mood is decidedly more somber.

A sign posted on one tent read ''Search Dogs.'' And a red fire department bus parked nearby had a hand-written placard in the window, ''Families.''

Volunteers from the Salvation Army and the Red Cross worked in the tent city to provide hot meals and snacks for the hundreds of firefighters who have been at the scene around the clock. Other tents offered counseling and massages.

''This huge city has developed,'' said Worcester's District Chief James Callery.

''It's a miracle,'' he said. ''I've never seen anything like it.''

Yet always looming in the background is the gutted remains of the five-story, red brick warehouse. Smoke still poured from the mostly demolished building Wednesday. Search efforts were impeded in a walled section, where flames could still be seen through a few windows.

Near the base of the building, six men stood in ankle-deep mud painstakingly probing the wet soot for any sign of the missing men. One firefighter used a rake to gingerly poke through a small pile of ash while five firefighters with trowels worked at a screen set up on a table under a tarp. They're looking for anything that might direct them to four bodies still unaccounted for.

''You have to witness it. It's just incredible but it's the only way they can do it,'' said Bill McGuirk, a retired firefighter whose brother, Joseph McGuirk, remained missing in the building.

''They don't want to miss a single thing, whether it be a button from some fallout gear, whatever it is, a fingernail, they just won't miss a single thing,'' he told WBZ radio.

Authorities believe a homeless couple who lived in the vacant warehouse started the fire when they knocked over a candle during an argument. The two pleaded innocent Tuesday to involuntary manslaughter and were ordered held on $1 million bail.

A makeshift memorial grows each day as passersby put more and more flowers onto a parked fire truck on the edge of the tent city, just under Interstate 290. Access to the parking lot-turned-tent city is restricted, however, and firefighters and support crews are being given photo identification badges they wear clipped to their chest.

When not working on the search, firefighters mill around the tent city. It is loud with demolition equipment and helicopters occasionally hovering overhead. Rest does not come easy, though there are cots for napping. Some men line up for hot meals, while others eat bagels, doughnuts and other snacks.

''The volunteers are holding up well,'' said Kit Murray, who was serving food in a Red Cross chow line. ''We have people in from all different places and they're doing a magnificent job.''

Overhead, a brand-new American flag was raised to half-staff Wednesday on the parking lot's flag pole. The previous flag was blackened by nearly a week of smoky air.

''Firefighters are showing up on their own, not attached to their departments,'' said District Chief Walter Giard. ''They just show up at the staging areas and ask if they can go to work.''