AP writer Meghan Barr has an article about dead letter handling for zipcode 10048:
It is the kind of holiday mail that might have been tossed aside, discarded like any other piece of junk mail: a special gift offer for a facial at a local spa.
Only the address on the letter no longer exists.
And the woman the letter is addressed to died more than five years ago in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Hundreds of pieces of mail destined for the former World Trade Center still arrive every day at a post office facing ground zero — the relics of the unfinished lives of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001.
Telephone bills, insurance statements, wine club announcements, college alumni newsletters, even government checks populate the bundles of mail. Each one bears the postal code once reserved exclusively for the twin towers: 10048.
…
The fact that the Postal Service is even forwarding mail from a nonexistent address five years later is rare. “Normally we’d only forward mail for a year,” [U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Pat] McGovern said. “But we’re making an exception here.”
Read the whole thing.
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