The ceremony honoring the nearly 3,000 victims of the Sept. 11 terror attack will be held this year without live readings from families to adhere with coronavirus pandemic safety practices, 9/11 Memorial & Museum staff confirmed over the weekend.
Instead of live readings by families of the victims, recorded name readings will be used. Museum staff notified the families by mail last week ahead of this year's 19th anniversary.
"To adhere to social distancing guidelines, name reading recordings from the museum's memorial exhibition will be played instead of victims' families reading the names as in previous years," a spokesperson for the museum said.
9/11 Memorial
The Sept. 11 memorial plaza was scheduled to reopen to the public on July 4, more than three months after it closed due to the coronavirus.
Visitors will once again be allowed to approach the memorial pools that sit in the footprints where the twin towers used to stand, but the museum at the site remains closed. A plan for its reopening is in the works.
The memorial and the museum had been closed since March 13, with the water flowing into the pools turned off except for maintenance and the area roped off to keep people away from the panels of names listing those lost in the attacks.
