Archive for the ‘Research Comex Vault’ Category

Cache of Gold Found

Cache of Gold Found at WTC Two truckloads
retrieved through a tunnel in rubble

By GREG GITTRICH, THOMAS ZAMBITO and LEO STANDORA
Daily News Staff Writers URL Link to Complete Story Here

Workers at Ground Zero unearthed last night a buried treasure of gold, hidden for weeks under the ruins of the World Trade Center.

As a small army of federal agents with shotguns and automatic rifles stood guard, city cops and firefighters packed two Brink's armored trucks with the lode, sources said.

This is not a shocker, as it was rumored that as much as $160 Billion in bullion was stored under the Trade Center. Let's read on.

The sources said the gold was found in a delivery tunnel under 5 World Trade Center.

They are taking gold out of there right now," one source said last night. "They've brought in extra cops."

It wasn't immediately clear how much gold was recovered last night - or exactly how much was buried under the complex after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Toronto-based Bank of Nova Scotia has said its vault under 4 World Trade Center alone held more than $200 million in gold and silver. Bank spokeswoman Pam Agnew didn't immediately know if any of that gold was found last night.

Other companies are believed to have lost untold gold and valuables in the disaster.

For the last couple of days, construction workers - directed by the feds - had been clearing a delivery tunnel that runs under the complex.

Officials finally got to the gold through that tunnel yesterday, after workers hauled out a 10-wheel truck, several crushed cars and mounds of debris.

No bodies were recovered during the operation.

As workers inched closer to the gold yesterday, authorities began restricting access to the north side of Ground Zero and FBI and Secret Service agents joined cops and firefighters at the site.

"If I tried to go down there, they would have shot me," said a construction worker shooed away from the tunnel.

A handful of heavy-machinery operators and other workers, under the watchful eyes of more than 100 armed officers, built and graded a ramp into the delivery tunnel.

A small bulldozer knocked down a wall inside the tunnel, and a Brink's armored truck drove in just before sunset.

It came out about 7 p.m. with the first load of gold, sources said. A second truck entered the tunnel a short time later and also was loaded with gold before leaving.

A handful of construction workers were held over from the day shift, which ends at 7 p.m., to help.

"They sent most of us on our merry way," said one worker.

Millions Under WTC

Attacks Buried Millions Under WTC
"Underneath the crushed concrete and twisted steel girders of the World Trade Center lie about $200 million in gold and silver owned by a Canadian bank.Officials at the Toronto-based Bank of Nova Scotia have no idea when they will be able to recover the gold and silver but aren't worried that someone might try to steal it."All of ground zero is extremely secure,'' said bank spokeswoman Diane Flanagan.The gold and silver was in a vault at 4 World Trade Center, which was reduced to rubble just like the twin towers that collapsed after the Sept. 11 attack. It was not immediately clear in what form the precious metals were in, such as ingots or coins."We have every reason to believe it is safe and intact,'' Flanagan said. "And we have every reason to believe it is fully recoverable.''Besides the legions of police officers who prevent onlookers from approaching the trade center site, the bank has hired its own security contingent to protect the assets.Flanagan wouldn't say how many security officers are on duty at the site for the bank, or what precautions have been put in place. The eight vault employees who kept watch over the gold and silver before the attacks escaped unharmed.The gold and silver is insured and is part of a larger cache controlled by the bank's bullion and precious metals subsidiary, Scotia Mocatta Depository Corp." - Journal Sentinel/AP (10/06/01)
Millions in gold and silver recovered from WTC - CTV (10/31/01)
Cache of gold found at WTC; Two truckloads retrieved through a tunnel in rubble
"Workers at Ground Zero unearthed last night a buried treasure of gold, hidden for weeks under the ruins of the World Trade Center.This is not a shocker, as it was rumored that as much as $160 Billion in bullion was stored under the Trade Center." - NY Daily News (10/31/01) [Reprinted at: sierratimes.com; rense.com]
Crushed towers give up cache of gold ingots
"RECOVERY workers at Ground Zero have discovered hundreds of gold ingots, part of a billion dollar cache which was lost when the twin towers fell.The collapsed buildings contained a number of vaults and strongrooms, but the police were not saying who owned the gold.The Comex metals trading division of the New York Mercantile Exchange kept 3,800 gold bars — weighing 12 tonnes and worth more than $100 million (£70 million) — in vaults in the building’s basement. Comex also held almost 800,000 ounces of gold there on behalf of others with a value of about $220 million. It also held more than 102 million ounces of silver, worth $430 million.The Bank of Nova Scotia, which kept gold in the Comex vault, reported $200 million of gold lost in the wreckage. Comex also held precious metals for Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bank of New York and Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking." - Times Online (11/01/01) [Archived at: 911research.wtc7.net]
Thanksgiving at Ground Zero
"Unknown to most people at the time, $650 million in gold and silver was being kept in a special vault four floors beneath Four World Trade Center. The gold and silver were recently recovered." - Delta Farm Press (11/19/01)
(See also: February 26, 1993 - Police first believed '93 WTC attack was an attempted gold robbery; October 30, 2001 - Recovery workers discover hundreds of gold bars in a delivery tunnel under WTC 5 that was being transported by a 10-wheel truck)

Buried WTC gold returns to futures trade

A fortune in gold trapped for seven weeks in the ruins of the World Trade Center officially returned to the global bullion trade Friday, but dealers had already closed the book on the tale of tragedy and buried treasure.

"You could in theory say that if things had gone much worse since September 11 and there had been rampant demand or something like that, that it might have been a story that affected the price. But at this point, I don't think it really was," said a metals specialist at a large commodity brokerage.

The $230 million in precious metals has been moved from the basement vaults of ScotiaMocatta Depository at 4 WTC, where it was stored on behalf of the New York Mercantile Exchange when the September 11 attacks brought down the twin towers. All warehouse staff got out safely.

In a joint statement Friday, NYBOT and ScotiaMocatta, the metals trading division of Canada's Bank of Nova Scotia, said the metals had been relocated and were again available to guaranty delivery of futures contracts exchange traded at the COMEX metals division of the NYMEX.

"All of the silver, gold, platinum, and palladium stored in its vaults at 4 World Trade Center have been successfully relocated by an Exchange-approved carrier to a newly Exchange-licensed Brink's Inc depository in Brooklyn," they said.

Spurred by authorities who wanted to demolish the building, by the potential for crime, and by whatever has always driven men to hunt for gold, emergency crews dug through the rubble and got a first glimpse of the gleaming booty on Oct 30.

Guarded by a small army of heavily armed federal agents, city policemen and firefighters began the massive task of moving about 12 tonnes of gold and 30 million ounces of silver. The hoard was estimated to be worth at least $230 million.

There were about 3,800 100-Troy-ounce registered gold bars in the underground COMEX warehouse. While gold is very dense, the task of loading the indestructible yellow metal onto armoured Brinks trucks was not nearly as cumbersome as moving the silver.

Experts said it would take some 50 tractor trailers to transport 30,000 1,000-ounce silver bars.

On top of that, it is believed that other treasures were kept in the vaults, including additional precious metals, jewels and securities. But there has been no information on whether these valuables were there or recovered.

ScotiaMocatta has applied to establish a new exchange-licensed depository in New York for silver, gold, platinum and palladium. Upon approval, the metal being held in ScotiaMocatta's custodial account at Brinks will be relocated to this facility, they said.

The NYMEX has another warehouse in Manhattan, operated by HSBC Bank USA.

Despite initial concern among precious metals dealers, the temporary lack of access to the metal hardly caused a ripple in the markets. The buried gold amounted to about 2 per cent of the 600-tonne-a-day global bullion market.

The metal was insured and supply was available from facilities at refiners elsewhere in the United States, though some may have been remelted into the 100-ounce bars of 99.5 per cent pure gold to meet COMEX delivery specifications.

The exchange said it plans to rescind its emergency rules which allowed an individual or firm taking delivery of metal under the terms of a futures contract to reject a warrant -- a document giving title -- for metal on deposit at the buried ScotiaMocatta vault.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2001/nov/17wtc.htm

Gold and silver buried in WTC

By Simon English

Last Updated: 9:22pm BST 18/09/2001

GOLD and silver worth $240m (£170m) is buried under the debris that is all that remains of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan.

Rescue workers searching through the rubble will at some point come across 30m ounces of silver and almost 380,000 ounces of gold, though in what condition is not clear. The silver, worth around $128m, represents a third of the stockpile of Comex, the futures exchange.

The treasure was stored by the Scotia Mocatta Depository Corporation on behalf of investors that trade futures contracts in precious metals on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYME). The value of each metal, seen as "safe havens" in times of crisis, has risen since the terrorist attack.

Gold jumped almost 7pc on Monday to an 18-month high of $290.90 an ounce but fell back yesterday to $287.50. Silver closed in London yesterday at $4.31 an ounce, up from $4.27. The metal had been stored in the WTC for years and almost never changed hands.

Investors buying and selling gold and silver usually just exchange the warrants that indicate ownership. Only 1pc of gold trades involves a physical transfer, said the NYME. Analysts say that the amount under the building is not significant enough to cause a shortage in either gold or silver.

Graham Birch, head of mining at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, said investors have been moving into his £82m gold equity unit trust. "Gold is also something of a dollar hedge and the lower interest rates are the more attractive, it seems," he said.

Trading in the fund was closed last week, however. The NYME is based at the World Financial Centre, near the ruins of the towers.

It re-opened for business on Monday after working from temporary headquarters last week. An internet trading system was devised to allow at least some dealing. The exchange was the subject of a bomb threat yesterday and evacuated the building as a "precautionary measure", halting trading briefly.

It is an old-style open outcry trading floor that was left intact by the attacks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2001/09/19/cngold19.xml

A Treasure in Silver and Gold 2

A Treasure in Silver and Gold

RICH GARLOCK: The vault was huge — two levels, 3,000 square feet each. When they opened the door, I realized why it was so big: there was a lot of gold and silver. The silver bars were like large loaves of bread, only they weighed about 70 pounds. The gold was smaller, but also very heavy, about 28 pounds each. It was around Halloween and I joked that I was going to come dressed as a Brinks guard. The team did a test run with the Brinks truck to make sure that it had the clearance, driving it up and then back out. The next morning the New York Post reported the vault had been emptied. In fact, it took a week to remove. The police said, "Hey, we couldn't have better publicity."

http://www.pbs.org/americarebuilds/engineering/engineering_property_02.html

THE VAULT; Below Ground Zero

By JIM DWYER

Published: November 1, 2001

About two weeks ago, a security team spotted scorch marks on a basement doorway below 4 World Trade Center, on the east side of the ruined complex, according to officials.

Even in a place of mass devastation and death, those scorch marks got fast attention. They had not been noticed by a patrol team a few hours earlier, and behind the damaged -- but intact -- door were nearly a thousand tons of gold and silver. To security officials, it looked as if someone had tried to break in.

Within hours, a video surveillance system was installed to keep at least an electronic eye on the precious metals until their custodian, the Bank of Nova Scotia, had a chance to remove them. That work began this week.

A team of 30 firefighters and police officers are helping to move the metals, a task that can be measured practically down to the flake but that has been rounded off at 379,036 ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver.

As layers of debris are peeled away, recovery workers are opening gangways to intact portions of a 16-acre basement that was largely unseen but was a place of spectacular scope in its own right. Just the basement area of the World Trade Center enclosed twice as much space as the entire Empire State Building.

Nearly a quarter of a mile below the spectacular vistas from the towers was their upside-down attic dropping 70 feet below the ground, a strange world with enough room for fortunes in gold and silver, for Godiva chocolates, assault weapons, old furniture, bricks of cocaine, phony taxicabs and Central Intelligence Agency files. With so many people still lost, the owners of this stuff have maintained a discreet silence during the recovery operations. But that doesn't mean they're not interested.

Beneath the Customs House -- 6 World Trade Center -- was an armada of government vehicles, including dozens owned by the Secret Service, in a fenced-off area. Within that area was a garage where a single armored limousine was parked under the tightest security.

The limousine was so long that it needed straight-line access to the street, because it could not clear tight corners in the basement.

That car had been used to carry heads of state visiting the city, said Tony Ball, a spokesman for the Secret Service. (The president's limousines are stored in Washington and flown everywhere he visits.)

In the 1993 trade center bombing, an armored Secret Service limousine was parked about 100 feet from a truck bomb. Although the bomb crashed through five stories of concrete and the concussion destroyed cars all over that floor, the Secret Service limousine ''did not even have a broken windshield,'' according to a government official on the scene that day. The condition of the limousine after September's attack was not known yesterday. ''We haven't gotten anything back yet,'' Mr. Ball said.

Asked about reports that his agency also kept what looked like ordinary taxis and telephone company trucks in the basement, Mr. Ball laughed. ''What I would say is that it is not unusual for law enforcement agencies to have these kinds of things,'' he said.

Besides the Secret Service, the building named for the United States Customs Service also housed an office of the C.I.A.

That building is now partly collapsed, with a rubble pit 30 feet deep. Somewhere in there are drugs, weapons and contraband seized by the Customs Service at the region's airports. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also lost two evidence vaults, according to a spokesman for that agency, Joseph Green. They have not yet been recovered.

''There could be several hundred weapons -- somewhere between 200 and 400, ranging from small-caliber semiautomatic pistols to assault rifles,'' Mr. Green said, adding that a few of the guns had been found. Agents plan to be on the scene when the remains of the building are demolished sometime in the next two weeks, he said.

''After that, we'll be working at the landfill to search for any important items that are still missing.''

For people who have seen the surface destruction, either in pictures or in person, it may be hard to imagine that anything is intact below ground. But engineers and recovery officials say that large parts of the underground perimeter are undamaged, even though the buildings above them are partly collapsed

One area is below 4 World Trade Center, where more than two decades ago, Swiss Bank built a huge vault and storage area. The vault was reached from the Swiss Bank offices by a private elevator.

To reach the vaults, armored trucks would drive through what had once been the tunnels for the Hudson and Manhattan railroad, the predecessor of the PATH system. These tunnels had run as far east as Church Street, but were not needed when the trade center was built and the PATH terminal was set closer to the river.

The western stubs of the original tunnels, ringed with cast iron, were converted into roadways. These roads ran directly to a roll-down door in front of the Swiss Bank vault area. Inside was a loading dock.

By the time of the 1993 bombing, Swiss Bank no longer was using the vault, and shortly afterward, the bank relocated its remaining operations.

The next tenant of the vault space was the Bank of Nova Scotia, which estimated the value of the metals at $200 million.

''We are in the process of relocating the contents of our vault at World Trade Center building No. 4 to another secure location, because authorities need to demolish the building,'' Pam Agnew, a spokeswoman for the bank, said yesterday by phone from Toronto.

Some of the metal is owned by the bank, and some by its customers, she said. She declined to say where the metals were being taken.

''The contents remain safe and intact,'' Ms. Agnew said. ''The contents are fully insured. We're working very closely with local authorities to ensure a safe and secure relocation effort.

''The removal of the contents was not a priority for us because we've always known it was safe and secure,'' Ms. Agnew said.

Asked about what appeared to be an attempted break-in two weeks ago, Ms. Agnew said that she was unaware of it. Later, she called to reiterate that the metals were safe: ''It would be factually incorrect to say there had been any attempt to steal the contents of our vault.''

However, a government official involved in the recovery efforts said that there had clearly been an attempt within the last two weeks to enter the vault area. ''It looked like they used a blowtorch, a crowbar,'' said the official, who spoke on the condition that neither his name nor his position be identified. ''The Port Authority police began periodic patrols, and then a closed-circuit television system was put in.''

The bank also engaged Kroll Inc., a security business based in New York, to supervise the relocation of the gold and silver, a process that began this week, The Daily News reported yesterday.

Michael Cherkasky, the president of Kroll, declined to comment on his company's involvement.

Anyone trying to make off with the gold would not be able to run very fast: each ingot weighs 70 pounds.

Correction: November 7, 2001, Wednesday An article on Thursday about property of the C.I.A. and the Secret Service buried at the World Trade Center site misstated the nearby location of the two agencies' former offices. While the agencies stored vehicles beneath the Custom House, at 6 World Trade Center, their offices were in No. 7.

Times Article Nov. 1 2001

November 01, 2001
Crushed towers give up cache of gold ingots
From Nicholas Wapshott in New York

RECOVERY workers at Ground Zero have discovered hundreds of gold ingots, part of a billion dollar cache which was lost when the twin towers fell.

Workers clearing rubble in a service tunnel underneath one of the collapsed World Trade Centre buildings found themselves surrounded by more than 100 armed FBI and secret service personnel, who had been tipped off by the owners where the gold was buried.

The collapsed buildings contained a number of vaults and strongrooms, but the police were not saying who owned the gold.

The Comex metals trading division of the New York Mercantile Exchange kept 3,800 gold bars — weighing 12 tonnes and worth more than $100 million (£70 million) — in vaults in the building’s basement. Comex also held almost 800,000 ounces of gold there on behalf of others with a value of about $220 million. It also held more than 102 million ounces of silver, worth $430 million.

The Bank of Nova Scotia, which kept gold in the Comex vault, reported $200 million of gold lost in the wreckage. Comex also held precious metals for Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bank of New York and Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking.

The vaults higher up the towers became burial chambers on September 11 as some workers tried in vain to protect themselves from the fire and smoke by taking refuge inside them.

The gold, which was discovered on Tuesday, was being transported through the basement of the building on the morning of September 11. Recovery workers reached a service tunnel and discovered a ten-wheel lorry and a number of cars which had been crushed by falling steel.

A temporary ramp was built to gain access to the tunnel and a small bulldozer was used to break through a wall. Then a team of police and firefighters arrived to put the gold into an armoured bullion lorry. Other workers were told to make themselves scarce. “If I tried to go down there they would have shot me,” one said.

Eight years ago, when the World Trade Centre was bombed by terrorists, more than $1 billion in gold was being kept in the basement vaults, the property of the Kuwaiti Government. The vaults withstood the blast.

At first police believed the terrorist attack was an attempted gold robbery. Since then the amount of gold kept under the World Trade Centre has been a carefully guarded secret.

http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/evidence/timesonline_gold.html

Article Clips Of WTC Vault

Gold Heist Story Heist

The basement of 4 World Trade Center housed vaults used to store gold and silver bullion. Published articles about precious metals recovered from the World Trade Center ruins in the aftermath of the attack mention less than $300 million worth of gold. All such reports appear to refer to a removal operation conducted in late October of 2001. On Nov. 1, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced that "more than $230 million" worth of gold and silver bars that had been stored in a bomb-proof vault had been recovered. A New York Times article contained: 2

Two Brinks trucks were at ground zero on Wednesday to start hauling away the $200 million in gold and silver that the Bank of Nova Scotia had stored in a vault under the trade center ... A team of 30 firefighters and police officers are helping to move the metals, a task that can be measured practically down to the flake but that has been rounded off at 379,036 ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver ..

Another article gave a figure of $650 million to the value of gold in the 4 WTC vault.

An article in the TimesOnline gives the following rundown of precious metals that were being stored in WTC vaults belonging to Comex.

• Comex metals trading - 3,800 gold bars weighing 12 tonnes and worth more than $100 million
• Comex clients - 800,000 ounces of gold with a value of about $220 million
• Comex clients - 102 million ounces of silver, worth $430 million
• Bank of Nova Scotia - $200 million of gold

The TimesOnline article is not clear as to whether the $200 million in gold reported by the Bank of Nova Scotia was part of the $220 million in gold held by Comex for clients. If so, the total is $750 million; otherwise $950 million.

There appear to be no reports of precious metals discovered between November of 2001 and the completion of excavation several months later. It would seem that at least the better part of a billion dollars worth of precious metals went missing. It is not plausible that whatever destroyed the towers vaporized gold and silver, which are heavy malleable metals that are extremely unlikely to participate in chemical reactions with other materials.

The authors of the book 9/11 Revealed were apparently so impressed with the story that they paid 9-11 Research the ultimate compliment -- they plagiarized the story. The following passage from the 9-11 Research critique of the book explains how the report was lifted by 9/11 Revealed without credit:

One of the more egregious examples of the book's appropriation without credit of 911Research's reporting is its paragraph covering the discrepancy between the value of precious metals reportedly stored under the World Trade Center and the value reported recovered after the attack.

9/11 Revealed copies this image, along with the gist of 911Research's original reporting, without crediting 911Research.

Some $230 million worth of gold was discovered in a lorry in a tunnel under the Center in November 2001. ²¹ We have seen no reports of other caches being found. However, Comex was reported to have at least $950 million worth of gold stored in its vault under the Center, and the fate of that haul remains unknown. ²²
[page 107]
21 "Below Ground Zero, Silver and Gold", New York Times, 1 November 2001
22 National Real Estate Investor, 19 November 2001
[page 240]

Compare this excerpt to the [ archived excerpt], which has existed in its current form on 911Research since late 2003. The two references cited by 9/11 Revealed for this story are References 1 and 4 from our page. The $950 million figure comes from 911Research, not from reference 22.

Unknown to most people at the time, $650 million in gold and silver was being kept in a special vault four floors beneath Four World Trade Center. The gold and silver were recently recovered.

More at this link.

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/gold.html

Pictures From Ground Zero Vault

These pictures where provided by Paul Renda, his coins where in the vault under the world trade center around 250 coins where in his box when he open it up. This is his word about the coins from his Chase Manhattan Bank deposit box "They were in the main zone of destruction and were subjected to 1500 degrees for 7 -10 days. My coins went from MS65+ to VF in the time it took to dig them out . ( when bad things happen to good coins). Paul Renda stated that his coins where at the chase Manhattan bank next to the world trade center and in the main debris of the world trade center. Look for the Paul Renda coin story here in a few days.

A Numismatic Catastrophe

By Ron Guth

Published in Rare Coin Market Report November 2007 www.pcgs.com

This is a true story from 9/11-- one with a numismatic angle. What you are about to read pales in comparison to the loss of human life on that fateful day, but this is a story that needs to be told.

Imagine this nightmare scenario: your bank, where your coins are stored in a safe deposit box, calls to tell you that the bank building collapsed and all that's left is a pile of burning rubble. Plus, it will be month before you can recover anything from your box, assuming the box can be found. That's exactly what happened to collector Paul Renda. You see, Paul's coins were inside a box...inside a vault... inside a New York branch of JP Morgan Chase...inside a skyscraper....which was one of the twin towers known as the World Trade Center On September 11, 2001, terrorists flew planes into each of the towers, causing them to burn and collapse, taking with them nearly 3000 lives and destroying billion of dollars worth of property-- including Paul's coins.

Rescue operations began immediately but were hampered by smoldering fires, poor aor quality and fears of additional collapses due to the unstable structure of the immense pile of rubble. When it became apparent that there were no more survivors, the effort became a recovery and cleanup operation. Demolition crew picked apart the twisted steel and crushed concrete, searching for human remains, recovering lost property and moving away big and small pieces of the towers that once dominated the Manhattan skyline.

Deep beneath the rubble and remains lay a vast assortment of treasures ranging from $230 million in precious metals to entire bank vaults and safe deposit boxes like the one rented by Paul Renda. Eventually, these treasures were recovered and restored to their rightful owners, when such identification was possible. Moths after the collapse, Paul Renda was summoned to a special location to reclaim his treasure. According to the final appraisal report, "The Renda collection of coins is comprised primarily of coins pulled from circulation and a small group of choice un-circulated silver dollars." The inventory list included a variety of coins including Lincoln cents, Shield Nickels, Walking Liberty half dollars, nine silver dollars (six of which were Morgan dollars), and others. In all Paul's box contained 243 coins. Everyone, especially Paul, was anxious to see if his coins had survived and, if they had, what kind of condition they were in. Mr Renda provided PCGS with a videotape of the day he went to recover the contents of his safe deposit box. Watching the video is powerful, as one sees a scene that must have been repeated hundreds, if not thousands of times, by other people claiming the contents of their boxes. The video begins with Paul entering a storage room in which stacks of safe deposit boxes have been placed around the perimeter. The boxes look terrible; they appear burnt, crushed, and many of the doors have already been drilled out or popped open. The fronts have been spray-painted in graffiti-like fashion as a mean of identifying the bank or location in which they were found. Paul is seen scanning each of the stacks, searching for his box (#Z-433), which he finally finds at the lower left corner of one of the burnt-out stacks. The door to Paul's box appears to be in remarkably good shape, better than many of the others, and he attempts to insert his key, to no avail. A technician uses a hammer to punch out the locks and pry open the door. The technician pulls Paul's box out of its drawer and carries it to a makeshift cubicle where the box and its contents can be examined. Paul is given a pair of latex gloves to protect his hands from the soot. The box is charred on the outside but appears to be in good shape, so Paul is hopeful that the contents might have survived. Paul gently opens the lid and peers inside. Paul's hope turns to dismay as the box reveals nothing but the blackened remains of album pages, documents and coins. The temperatures required to melt coins inside a steel box must have been immense. The paper pages of the albums remained intact and appeared to have been turned into charcoal more so than having being burnt. Paul can be seen lifting blackened,individual coins out of the box and laying them onto a sheet of black plastic. As he lift out the individual album pages, coins can be seen dropping from the holes. The pages themselves are very fragile and prone to crumbling. Soon Paul has before him a pitiful pile of burnt album pages and blackened coins. The back of Paul's box contains important documents. Surprisingly most of the documents remain relatively intact as single fragile pages. Paul is able to separate them and, if they don't crumble apart, he can actually read some of them.

Three of Paul's coins are illustrated with this video. Each coin shows severe discoloration and blistering of the surfaces. The melting point of silver is 1,763 degrees Fahrenheit, giving some idea of the inferno these coins endured.

The contents of Paul's box were a disaster. The heat, fire, and corrosive action of the World Trade Center's destruction reduced the value of Paul's collection to that of the bullion value of the silver coins. Likewise, his documents were effectively unsalvageable.

It may come as a surprise to most people, but banks usually have no liability of any kind for the contents of the safe deposit boxes in their care. However, because of the extraordinary circumstances of September 11, JP Morgan Chase offered to compensate Paul for his loss. They hired an outside appraiser to examine the contents of the box and to determine a replacement value for the coins. Surprisingly, the final settlement amount offered by JP Morgan Chase was higher than the hypothetical loss developed by the appraiser. However, Paul decided not to accept the settlement, opting instead to retain all 243 of his coins as memories of this historic event. He plans to donate some of the coins to museums but the bulk of the coins will remain with his family.

Paul Renda's association with the World Trade Center goes beyond this story. Paul was working in the offices of Dean Witter Discover in Two World Trade Center when it was bombed in 1993. He experienced the terror of huddling in a room filling with smoke, not knowing whether to stay put or attempt to make it down to the street. He chose the latter. Paul's cousin Thomas "Tommy" Farino died on 9/11 while responding to the attack. Tommy was a New York Fire Department Captain ( the youngest named Captain of Engine Co. 26) and was promoted posthumously to Battalion Chief.