We Remember 9/11

In Ceremonies Around The Nation, Including In New Orleans

(CBS/AP)  Weeping relatives marked the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks with prayers, solemn remembrances and heartfelt messages to their dead brothers and sisters at the site where the World Trade Center collapsed in a nightmarish cloud of dust and debris in 2001.

In a Sunday ceremony lasting longer than four hours, more than 600 relatives read the names of the 2,749 victims who died at the trade center. Several blew kisses to the sky after reading a loved one's name, while others left the microphone sobbing. Several held up photos of their loved ones.

"We miss you Charlie and we love you, your boys will always remember," Peggy Garbarini told her brother, Fire Lt. Charles William Garbarini, who was 44 when he died at the trade center.

The ceremony came as Hurricane Katrina left Americans once again struggling with a catastrophe that caught the nation unprepared and left citizens dead and grieving. Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened the ceremony with words of condolence for those devastated by the hurricane.

CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston reports that in New Orleans, 500 New York and New Jersey police officers who survived the Sept. 11 attacks are now helping New Orleans get back on its feet. They stopped to remember as the names of fallen officers were read.

New York firefighters helping with the relief effort gathered around a makeshift memorial for their fallen comrades, accepting the gift of a bell from a nearby church whose steeple was destroyed in the storm. Rescue workers in Biloxi, Mississippi, took a break from searching for the storm's missing to remember those who died on Sept. 11.

For the local emergency workers, honoring their New York comrades while dealing with their own destruction was particularly important. "Now we can relate," said Deputy Biloxi Fire Chief Kirk Noffsinger.

At ground zero, the names of the dead echoed across the site one by one.

"You're taking care of us from heaven but someday we'll be together," Iliani Flores said, choking up and raising her face to the sky in memory of her younger brother, a fire department paramedic.

"My big sister, my better half, life will never be the same without you," Rolando Moreno said to Yvette Moreno, who worked for a brokerage in the north tower.