Are they being chicken or cautious?

From today's New York Times-

City and state officials are celebrating their commitment to fill space in the Freedom Tower. But there seems to be less cheering — and considerable distress — among people who might actually have to report for work every day in the symbolic replacement for the destroyed World Trade Center.

“I will not be able to work there,” said Ely Yulman, a tax auditor for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, which lost 40 employees in the World Trade Center. Mr. Yulman said he survived the attack only because he was out of his office in the south tower on the morning of Sept. 11.

“I have strong feelings of personal sorrow,” Mr. Yulman said. “The people who were there on Sept. 11, 100 percent they will oppose this idea.”

Alicia Ferrer, a tax auditor who lives in Chelsea, said she escaped that day because she decided to run an errand before reporting to her office on the 87th floor of the south tower. Her memories of the apocalyptic scene on the streets of Lower Manhattan — the falling bodies, abandoned vehicles and scattered shoes — are still quite vivid, she said as she arrived at a Sept. 11 memorial service for union members last evening.

“If my life depended on it, I couldn’t go there,” Ms. Ferrer said. “It would be beyond imaginable to put someone back there. If you had to go back there every day where you know their souls and spirits have to be, I don’t know. I couldn’t do it every single day.”

Even workers who had never set foot inside the trade center expressed fears of being ordered to relocate to the Freedom Tower. Several described the building, with its proposed spire reaching to 1,776 feet, as a likely target of future terrorism.

Anthony R. Coscia, the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site and is building the Freedom Tower, has been saying for months that the agency’s employees will return to ground zero but not to the Freedom Tower. He believes that asking them to work there, after they lost 84 colleagues in the trade center, “would simply carry too much emotional weight,” said Steve Sigmund, a spokesman for Mr. Coscia.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, when asked yesterday if Mr. Coscia’s sentiments would hamper efforts to fill the building, said, “Well, it doesn’t help.” The mayor said the tower would be “a wonderful building” and added that “everybody can make their own decisions, and if one person doesn’t want to work there that doesn’t mean other people don’t want to work there.”

The Port Authority, whose offices have been scattered in buildings north of Union Square, has committed to filling 600,000 square feet of another building proposed at the site, known as Tower 4.

To be honest, I don't know if I'd want to work there. It's one thing if you are paid for dangerous work, emergency services, police, military, etc. It is entirely different for someone who is a CPA or just a secretary. Is that job worth the risk?

I don't think civillians are being disresepctful either. That is just my opinion about anyone who may one day at the Freedom Tower. What do you think?

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