MARJORIE OLSTER, New York | Thursday
HOPES were fading on Thursday that more survivors would be found from an attack two days earlier that demolished the World Trade Center towers, now feared to be a mass tomb where thousands may be buried.
The preliminary death toll had reached 82 by early Thursday but was expected to rise sharply in the days and weeks to come.
New York City ordered 6_000 extra body bags.
About 40_000 people worked in the buildings, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said he feared a few thousand had been trapped in each of the towers.
Coordinated attacks leveled the landmark 110-story twin towers on Tuesday, stunning the world. Hijackers took over two other jetliners the same day. One crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
In a feverish around-the-clock search for survivors, hundreds of emergency workers used everything from heavy machinery to their bare hands to sift through tons of crushed concrete and twisted steel. Sniffer dogs searched the rubble of what had been a symbol of America’s financial power.
“They are sending the dogs in. When the dogs get a hit, they dig,” said Chief Lawrence Cleary of the Fire Department from the scene of the rescue effort. “But as time goes on, it doesn’t look good for finding survivors.”
The results of the monumental rescue effort were dismal. As anxious families anxiously waited to find out what happened to their loved ones, only three people were found alive in searches all day on Wednesday. Another two survivors were discovered on Tuesday.
New Yorkers were only beginning to comprehend the enormity of the catastrophe certain to claim a heavy toll on lives, property and any sense of security they may have felt before.
The city of eight million was eerily quiet on Wednesday, residents were palpably nervous and police stepped up their presence on the streets.
About 1 500 National Guard troops were deployed and a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was stationed a few kilometres away, off the south coast of Long Island.
At the site of the disaster, bright searchlights lit the hellish ruins to allow searches throughout the night.
“It’s burning inside. It’s like Dante’s ‘Inferno,'” said rescue worker Giuseppe Sergi. “There is fear that the temperature is too high, so the metal may still collapse.”
The sidewalks and streets surrounding flattened buildings were strewn with mangled cars, demolished rescue equipment and personal belongings. Thick layers of dust and paper that rained down after the explosions covered dozens of blocks.
In some places, the paper was waist-high – clogging fire escapes and crevices in surrounding buildings.
Southern Manhattan below 14th street was shut down.
In the center of the complex was a huge crater filled with tangles of metal beams. Firefighters with flashlights in hand walked gingerly over the beams and dug with their hands.
“They are searching anything open like this,” said Chief Peter Rice pointing down into a crater. “A void that someone might have fallen into.”
FBI agents were on site looking for criminal evidence.
Rescuers, some in face masks to protect against the dust, used motion detectors to search for survivors and construction equipment to remove tons of still smoldering debris.
One Liberty Plaza, a 54-storey building, fell due to damage from Tuesday’s collapse of the neighbouring 110-storey twin towers.
Emergency workers were evacuated as the building was teetering about 5 pm.
Another high-rise in the complex, known as Building 7, neighbouring the twin towers, toppled about 24 hours earlier. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, said 450 000 tons of debris would have to be cleared from the twin towers and another 15 000 from the third building that collapsed. Giuliani said 3 000 tons of debris had already been removed.
Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he felt “sick to my stomach” looking down on the devastation as he flew into the city. “The beautiful tall towers that symbolize New York, they’re gone, and replaced by a pile of acrid smoke.”
Doctors at nearby hospitals reported disturbingly few people to treat.
“There were a lot of body bags. There were a lot of body parts,” surgeon Andrew Feldman said at the rescue scene.
In wrenching scenes played out over and over, panicked family members rushed from hospital to hospital looking for missing relatives.
Weeping and supported by two friends, Daphne Bowers went to Bellevue Hospital with a small framed picture of her missing 28-year-old daughter Veronique.
“She called me and she said, ‘Mommy, the building is on fire. There’s smoke coming through the walls. I can’t breathe,'” the distraught mother said. “The last thing she said was ‘I love you, Mommy, goodbye,’ and that was at 9:05.”
The dead include hundreds of firefighters and police officers who rushed to the scene to help after the attack. Most were probably killed when the towers collapsed.
Three of the hundreds of companies with offices in the World Trade Center said they could not account for about 1 500 workers, the New York Times reported.
A preliminary Reuters tally of employees at just four companies and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey found about 946 workers missing.
An eerie quiet settled over a traumatised New York City on the day after the attack. Everyone was on edge.
A shift in the winds sent the smell of the burning buildings wafting eight kilometres north of the stricken area, bathing Central Park in an acrid smell and causing some concern among residents that the fumes might be toxic.
Skies were devoid of the usual steady stream of airplanes and buzzing traffic helicopters, subways were nearly deserted and streets largely empty. Some businesses, most schools and Broadway theaters were closed.
Police were taking no chances. Late on Wednesday, they ordered the evacuation of thousands of people from the Empire State Building and surrounding blocks in midtown Manhattan.
It turned out to be a false alarm.
Some bridges and tunnels into Manhattan reopened on Wednesday. Newark International Airport in New Jersey reopened to limited traffic on Wednesday night under intense security.
Many New Yorkers stayed home while others gathered in city parks and held vigils for the dead. At one vigil in Union Square downtown, candles, flowers and handwritten signs carpeted the park and hundreds lingered into the early hours of Thursday. “Terrorism will never take the heart of New York and its people,” read one message. “We are still standing” read another. – Reuters
ZA*NOW:
Attackers may have known WTC weak spot September 12, 2001