Death toll mounts as nation tries to cope

09/13/2001

By DAVID JACKSON / The Dallas Morning News

NEW YORK – Fires burned, buildings crumbled and the death toll mounted Wednesday in New York and Washington as a stunned nation tried to cope with a terrorist attack that left thousands of people dead or missing.

Officials disclosed that Air Force One was among the terrorists' targets and that the Boeing 757 that slammed into the Pentagon might have been aimed at the White House.

In New York, smoke drifted across Manhattan as fires burned beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center's twin towers, destroyed after terrorists rammed them Tuesday morning with hijacked airliners. Officials guessed "a few thousand" people would have been in each of what were 1,350-foot landmarks. Only a few had been found alive. Nearly 300 firefighters were missing.

Rescue crews edged into the wreckage. But fireballs flared as crews began shifting the mountains of rubble. Four stories that remained of the trade center's south tower collapsed Wednesday afternoon, and portions of a nearby building fell a short time later. Devastation spread for 10 blocks around the Trade Center.

Thousands of New Yorkers continued their own searches for loved ones, usually without success. And the rest of the city's population, witnesses to the devastation, tried to come to grips with the tragedy.

"This is an incident that is going to remain in our minds for the rest of our lives," New York Gov. George Pataki said, "but we're going to overcome it."

Across America, though, the effects of Tuesday's attack lingered.

Most airlines remained grounded. Schools were closed in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Washington and parts of Virginia and Maryland. Military bases were closed to all but essential personnel. So was the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Major League Baseball postponed games for a second day, and the stock exchanges remained shuttered until Friday or Monday.

A full recovery could take a long time, particularly in New York.

In a city where brisk and brusque shape the pace of daily life, the streets stood remarkably quiet. Along Fifth Avenue and the rest of Manhattan's shopping districts, stores were closed. Taxies were almost impossible to find.

The usual buzz from business and commerce had evaporated, as if someone tapped the mute button. Church bells rang clearly, though, summoning people to special services in remembrance of the missing and the dead.

"The numbness is starting to disappear now. It's only settling in now that this thing is real," said Scott Kariya, a computer technician who joined the crowd outside of ABC's Good Morning America studio to watch the latest news on a Jumbotron TV.

But as shock turned to a reluctant acceptance, New Yorkers began talking about government's failures, about tightening the borders, about flat-out retaliation.

The government "needs to be on top of this. They need to protect us," said Joan Hauser, who still can't return to her home in Battery Park, near the World Trade Center.

"Where was our CIA and all our intelligence people?" she asked. "And what are we going to do to retaliate? We should. This was like a declaration of war."

In Washington, President Bush used almost those same words, calling the terrorism "acts of war."

"This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil," Mr. Bush said Wednesday. "But good will prevail."

New York's senators called on the nation and the world to reject terrorism absolutely.

In the fight against terrorism, other countries must be told "you are with us, or you are not," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said.

"You cannot draw a line and say terrorism is bad here but OK over there," added Sen. Charles Schumer. "You have to draw the line against terrorism wherever it is."

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, urged the Bush administration to demand that countries turn over the responsible terrorists or face the full might of America's military.

"It is time for us to ratchet up the heat on those countries that say they are our friends," she said. "We should not have a relationship with countries that are harboring terrorists who killed more people than in Desert Storm or probably at Pearl Harbor."

Air Force One

With National Guard troops stationed around the capital and security heightened, Congress resumed its work Wednesday, and the federal government reopened.

From the Justice Department where the investigation continues to the Transportation Department where new aviation security measures were being developed to the State Department where Secretary Colin Powell sought to build a coalition to respond to terrorism, much of the work centered on Tuesday's tragedy.

Nowhere was that more so than at the Pentagon, where the work of recovering bodies continued.

Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it is too early to say how high the death toll will be, but he discounted reports that it could be as high as 800. Officials said they didn't believe survivors would be found because "anyone who might have survived the initial impact and collapse could not have survived the fire that followed."

And at the site of the World Trade Center, where one police officer described the smoldering wreckage as "steel graffiti," it was difficult to be optimistic.

Dust and ash blanketed the streets, piled to the wheel wells of the cars abandoned there, each one scorched down to the bare metal by the heat of the fires.

The dead, 82 confirmed, were taken to makeshift morgues, one at a skating rink on Chelsea Pier. A Brooks Brothers clothing store was pressed into use, the place where workers brought body parts they found.

Pieces of wreckage from the trade center were taken by boat to a former garbage dump on Staten Island, where investigators searched for clues.

Christopher Wilshire, who lives on Manhattan's upper west side but works near the World Trade Center, rode his bike down to see whether his building was still standing, but police stopped him before he could get that far.

So he looked down Canal Street toward the wreckage perhaps 12 blocks away.

"It's so hard to take in," he said finally. "It's surreal. It's devastating."

Rescue crews hope to uncover more survivors, but New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said he still expects the death toll to be in the thousands.

Even as the grim work proceeds, Mr. Giuliani urged New Yorkers to slip back into their regular routines.

"We would urge people to get back to normal as much as possible," he said. "Go to restaurants. Go shopping. Show that you're not afraid."

New York's schools will reopen Thursday, though two hours late. And Mr. Giuliani said he hopes Broadway theaters will reopen Thursday as well.

Bridges and tunnels from New Jersey to Manhattan remained closed Wednesday, though commuters could reach New York by train. And most of New York's subways were running again.

But in midtown Manhattan, it appeared that few people had returned to work. Most of the people crowding around TVs in coffee shops were dressed casually.

"On the average Wednesday, you have the Broadway matinees and people are all around, going to work," said Richard Pernia, a doorman at the Time Hotel near Times Square. "Today is very different.

"It feels like a Sunday morning," he said.

On 11th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues in Manhattan, hundreds of people stood in line outside the New School University, hoping for some news about loved ones.

City officials promised to create a database tracking everyone who'd been taken from the World Trade Center towers to an area hospital. But that work is just beginning. So people have started their own searches, carrying photos of the missing and stopping anyone they see in case they know something.

Pat Sliwak-Grinberg, who runs a thrift shop in Manhattan, came with a photo of her brother, Robert. He worked on the 103rd floor of one of the towers.

"He called his wife and said there was a big boom. Then the line went dead," she said. "We haven't heard from him since."

Like many of those searching for loved ones, Ms. Sliwak-Grinberg refused to accept that her brother might be dead. When someone asked how old he was, she quickly corrected "was" to "is."

"I'm not giving up," she said. "I'm here to find my brother for my family."

But with the slow pace of the recovery efforts, and the precarious condition of the wreckage of the towers and the buildings around them, officials cautioned that it will take a long time to identify the terrorists' victims.

"We have lots of families seeking information," Mr. Giuliani said. "But we don't know the answers to all of those questions yet.

"We'll try to get more information and we'll try to get it as fast as we can to identify as many people as possible," he said. "But this is a situation we'll be dealing with for a while."

And despite hopes that New York City can return to normalcy again, that too could take a long time.

When a particularly large fire flared in the wreckage shortly after noon Wednesday, Suzana Jeremic and her friend Joseph McGowan couldn't quite believe it.

"To think something is burning again," Ms. Jeremic said. "It's so bizarre."

And just as the fires burned longer than they'd expected, a full recovering could take longer, too.

"We came to New York to pursue our dreams, and now the dreams are taking a different turn," Ms. Jeremic said.

"I think it will be normal again," Mr. McGowan said. "But it will be different."

Staff writers Michael E. Young, Robert Dodge, G. Robert Hillman, Christopher Lee, Tammy Theis, Richard Whittle and wire reports contributed to this story.