STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Nearly a dozen years after he was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, the remains of Staten Island firefighter Lt. Jeffrey Walz have been positively identified, the city Medical Examiner's office has announced. 
 
 Updated story: Wife reacts to the official ID of Lt. Jeffrey Walz 
 
 Walz' unit, Ladder 9, had responded to the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. Several of his fellow firefighters were able to get out of Tower 1 before it collapsed, but Walz was not among them. 
 
 "The only way to describe Jeff is to say he was the most caring, gentle, kind and patient person ever to enter my life," his wife, the former Rani Lurie told the Advance in the weeks after the attack. "I've never known anyone like him." 
 
 A Huguenot native and Tottenville High School graduate, Walz earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from The Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He was an electrical engineer in the Navy for five years before he entered the Fire Department, following in the footsteps of his father. 
 
 The Fire Department posthumously promoted him to lieutenant. 
 
 
 
 He and his wife moved to Westchester County in 1995, and had a son, Bradley, soon after. 
 
 His sister, Karen Ciaccio, described him as "a gentle giant." ||||| Charles G. Wolf’s wife Katherine went to work on the 97th floor of 1 World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and she never returned. Wolf knew that it was highly improbable that his wife’s remains would surface from the smoldering wreckage at ground zero: “I knew her body had been vaporized and immolated,” he explained. But he still held onto a faint glimmer that, through the recovery effort and extensive DNA testing, maybe her engagement ring would come back to him. But as time passes, even that prospect has faded. 
 
 “I’m not even hoping, because it’s 16 years on,” Wolf, 63, said last week, as the anniversary of his wife’s death approached. “I’m not tying myself down emotionally hoping and waiting.” 
 
 Wolf is just one of thousands of Americans who have never received remains of their loved one 16 years after the 9/11 attacks. As of August 2017, about 40% of the 2,753 people who died at the World Trade Center have never been identified through DNA testing on the remains that were collected from the site. The testing of the remains is ongoing; the 1,641st victim was identified last month. 
 
 “Clearly the families know and have legal proof [of death], but what is so important to them is the closure of having a scientific identification,” said Dr. Barbara Sampson, the New York City Chief Medical Examiner. “I’ve met with a number of families over the years and the sense of relief that they have is just tremendous.” 
 
 But some families of these victims gave up looking for these answers long ago. Michael Burke, whose brother William F. Burke Jr. was a firefighter killed in the towers, recalled the feeling of shock as he visited an assistance center in Manhattan in the days after the attacks, hoping to get information about his brother’s whereabouts. Instead, authorities asked him for a swab of his DNA. At that point, he said, he knew his brother wasn’t coming home. “They’re looking for envelope-sized remains,” he said. “At first you were hoping for a miracle — a guy might walk out there.” But at this point, having long since come to terms with his brother’s death 16 years earlier, “I don’t know what we would do now if they called us for the remains,” Burke said. 
 
 The unidentified remains, as well as remains that have not been claimed by relatives, were moved in 2014 to a 2,500-square-foot repository beneath the World Trade Center memorial in Lower Manhattan, although it is not part of the official museum. In between the footprints of the Twin Towers, it is run by the city and is not open to the public. A reflection room for the families of the victims is available next door. 
 
 Some family members of 9/11 victims disagreed on the placement of the repository adjacent to the admission-charging 9/11 Museum, but many, like Wolf, say they find comfort in visiting a place where they can remember their loved one. And while Wolf has given up hope of ever receiving Katherine’s remains, he knows exactly what he would do if that should happen: He would plan for her remains, and his, to ultimately be placed together in the columbarium at St. John’s Cathedral in New York City, where her memorial service was held in October of 2001. “She will be with me,” he said. ||||| City Sifts Debris for 9/11 Remains 
 
 The New York City medical examiner’s office will resume its search for human remains from the World Trade Center site. The office hopes advances in DNA identification technology may help identify all 2,753 people who died in the 9/11 attack in New York. 
 
 Over the next 10 weeks, workers will sift through roughly 590 cubic yards of debris from ground zero, currently in a designated section of the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island. 
 
 The city has identified the remains of 1,634 people who died in the September 11 attack in New York City. Since 2006, the city has positively identified 34 people using the new technology, but the medical examiner’s office currently has 27 unique identifications that don’t match any of the victims, according to a spokeswoman for the office. 
 
 Many families of 9/11 victims have supplied the medical examiner’s office with toothbrushes or combs in the hopes that they can match people with the DNA found in debris at the site. 
 
 Mary Fetchet, who runs the support and advocacy group Voice of September 11, is grateful for the ongoing work. She says said families can choose how often to be notified by the medical examiner when remains are discovered. She has been notified by the medical examiner’s office five times that remains of her son Brad have been recovered. The 24-year-old died in the South Tower. 
 
 “It's refreshing when you think about a government office or department like the medical examiner to be so caring and compassionate and dedicated in their continuing efforts to identify other victims,” she said. 
 
 But others, like Donald Goodrich are less pleased with the ongoing sifting. Goodrich’s 33-year old son, Peter, was on United flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower. The medical examiner recovered one of Peter’s bones from the site, but Goodrich said it provided little comfort. 
 
 “For me at this stage, it’s of no importance to me that somewhere in our about the city of New York there are bits of the physical being that was once Peter. They’re there, that science can detect them and then inform me of their detection, is of no solace to me,” he said. 
 
 Goodrich, who is chairman of the group Families of September 11, says any call from the medical examiner would be heart wrenching and difficult at this point. 
 
 “I have to remember him as he was, and I do,” he said. “There's nothing modern science can do to test for his soul. That belongs in another sphere, and that's what's most important to me.”
– The "gentle giant" is going back to his family. Improved DNA testing has identified the remains of another of the firefighters killed in the 9/11 attacks, reports the Staten Island Advance. Lt. Jeffrey Walz died in the north tower nearly a dozen years ago. “My family always felt at some point we would get a phone call,” his widow, Rani Walz, tells the New York Post. “I wasn’t so sure. This has reopened old wounds.” Walz was 37 when he died, leaving behind Rani and their 3-year-old son, Bradley. He managed to call his wife and parents from the tower before it collapsed, says his sister. As for that "gentle giant" nickname: “It was obviously because of his height and because he was such a good person," explains his wife. "He was a saint with me.” A city official says the remains of 1,637 World Trade Center victims have now been identified, leaving 1,116 unidentified. “At least we can say he’s not missing anymore,” mom Jennie Walz tells the Journal News. (This news follows an announcement made two weeks ago that the remains of a 43-year-old 9/11 victim had been identified.)