NEW YORK — Thousands of people have come from every corner of the world to see the World Trade Center's ruins, but untold numbers of New Yorkers feel no need to revisit the scene of the disaster.
Many New Yorkers spent Sept. 11 making frantic calls to loved ones while they watched in horror as the trade center's twin towers collapsed. A trip to ground zero would only rekindle memories of that calamitous day.
"It's sort of like going to a wake," said Bronx native Victoria Vasquez. "It makes it more real. But I know it's real. I don't need to see it to know."
There are no hard figures on the number of visitors, but crowds gathered at police barricades by the hundreds in the first 3 1/2 months after the attacks to get a glimpse.
Since the city opened a public viewing platform late last month, up to 6,500 tickets are handed out each day. If interviews conducted last week are any gauge, most visitors are not New Yorkers.
"One doesn't have to visit the site if you live in New York because it's become such a pervasive part of your everyday experience," said Mitchell Moss, director of New York University's Urban Research Center.
Philip Langer, who moved from lower Manhattan to the Upper East Side in June, avoids the site altogether. Two weeks after the attacks, he had a meeting just blocks from where the twin towers once stood but "I made sure that my route was directed away from the epicenter."
Langer said he doesn't want to tarnish the memory of his old neighborhood. "I close my eyes and I can picture what was there."
Sandy Appleby, a counselor who has worked with the Red Cross, said it's important for people to recover in their own ways.
"Some people feel that they need to go there, to see it and make peace with it," said Appleby, who came from Lake County, Ind., to provide counseling. "But others know themselves well enough to know it wouldn't be productive."
On Sept. 11, Philip Serghini and his friends rushed downtown to try to help but they didn't get far, as police quickly put up barricades. Later he stayed away because he thought he would be in the way but over time and as the death toll climbed, he started feeling that visiting ground zero was "a morbid thing to do."
"No offense to people who did go down there," said Serghini, who has lived in Manhattan for three years. "As long as they treated it with solemnity."
Some New Yorkers have found the throngs of tourists and sidewalk vendors peddling trade center memorabilia distasteful. But many harbor no ill feeling toward those who visit the site.
"Because we were part of it and were really all personally affected, we don't need to go down there," Serghini said. "It's not like closing a chapter for us, because it's not over."