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CNN Live Today

America Under Attack: Collapse Threat on American Express

Aired September 13, 2001 - 14:26   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Quickly, back to John Vause. John has been following now the threat of a collapse of the American Express building about a block or so from the Trade Center.

John, are you able to hear me?

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, yes, I hear you. We had a few moments ago, we heard three blast from a siren. That was their first evacuation order of the day. It appears work has continued as normal.

There were some threats that the Millennium Hotel may be coming down. There was a partial collapse here at the same time, or around the same time of building one. That threat appears to have passed, as far as the hotel is concerned. But we are told that the building is listing to a degree. It has workers here very, very concerned.

Right now I'm at the site of tower number one. It's an incredible site. The debris is a hundred feet tall. There are lines of men just moving debris by hands from buckets, passing it from one to the other. There is hundreds of thousand of people working here right now.

BROWN: John, stay where you are. I wonder if just for a second we can put up the map that we have just to show where the buildings are, the relationships of these buildings that are listing, or in danger of collapse.

As you take a look at what was the Word Trade Center complex on Tuesday, it is now a disaster zone at the highest level now. So the American Express building is listing a bit. And that's what has people concerned.

John, is it still relatively calm there? Are people moving calmly away?

VAUSE: It is extraordinarily calm given the circumstances. There was a brief moment when people ran, but still even when they run away from this scene, it is in calm, orderly fashion. People are told to get out and they move, they move very, very quickly. We were told to move and we ran with them.

As far as the placement of buildings, if you recall, there was a lot of conjecture about the safety of Liberty Plaza, which is now being turned into morgue. That is safe, but that is opposite the World Trade Center on Church Street (AUDIO). Hotel is about a block up, directly opposite the World Trade Center, and that took brunt of the blast when the building collapsed.

BROWN: So if I followed, and I think I did, we're talking about really a sort of a one-block area around the complex where these buildings are threatened. They're in a number of different directions, but basically it's a one block area form Liberty Plaza, the American Express building on the west side, toward the Westside Highway, if I get orientation correct.

VAUSE: Aaron, I'm sorry. You'll have to excuse. I must go now, Aaron. I will call you back. Thank you.

BROWN: Absolutely. Get out of harm's way, we don't want you hanging around and putting yourself at risk.

We're going to keep a camera on the building obviously for as long as we can.

Officials did go into One Liberty Plaza, which at about this time yesterday was thought to be in some danger of collapsing, and we were out there. We could see pieces of window falling off on at least the two sides of the building we were able to see. And some inspectors went into the building today and at least for now, they say that building is OK. That building among other things houses the executive office, the corporate offices of the Nasdaq. So much of what is in lower Manhattan is, as you all know now, involves Wall Street involves financial markets around the world, American Express building one of them.

Martin Savidge watching the building, watching the ground as well. Marty, I assume you are safe. Tell us what you can see.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we were just talking actually with an engineer as to try to ascertain exactly what is going on. He is a volunteer that is working inside the building that is in question here, and he says that all of those people that were inside this building, and as Adam pointed out earlier, this is a building that is being used by the rescue teams here for a number of different reasons.

Anyway, the building has been evacuated and apparently we are also being told that work has come to a standstill. Now, I have to paraphrase here and point out that we are not allowed to go down in that area. We have not been allowed to go down in that area. Security is extremely tight, and -- especially on the media. And so, we cannot go down there and sort of verify for ourselves.

But we are being told that this is the building that is in question. And here is the problem, as explained, is the fact that when the World Trade Center buildings came down, the collapse, the force of them hitting the ground was literally like triggering an earthquake, and some of this area here, some of it -- especially is on landfill. And as a result of that, structurally weakened buildings from the bottom up. And so, you can look at a building, as we pointed out before, and say it looks OK. And we should point out this particular building on the other side does have extensive damage. But from here, it looks all right, but at the base apparently there are problems.

Now, there has also been reports that there had been a water leak in the basement that had been going on for some time and that might also undermine the stability of the building. So again, all eyes appear to be focused on this particular point. Activity out here on the West Side Highway has come to a standstill. Some vehicles have been turned around. And we are being told that activity as far as searching for survivors has also been brought to a halt. And if it came this way, we would have a problem.

BROWN: Marty, stay with us here. Maybe we can highlight again the building so viewers are clear which building we are talking about. It's the one with the point. There you go. American Express building, Lehman Brothers also has considerable office space there. In the last three days, it has been used, as Martin said, as a triage center. It also has been used as a makeshift morgue, as a number of building around the World Trade Center complex have been.

We have referred any number of times today and in the last couple days to the West Side Highway. The West Side Highway runs along the Hudson on obviously on the West Side of Manhattan. It is the major thoroughfare. It runs pretty much the whole length of the island of Manhattan. As I walked down it yesterday, it is just lined with vehicles that are part of their rescue operation -- everything from dump trucks loaded with portable restrooms to generators with night lights to heavy construction vehicles to sanitation trucks, which in New York in the winter becomes snow plows and they put snow plows out in front of them to help those sanitation vehicles clear out some areas.

All of those trucks and assorted vehicles are lining the West Side Highway. You cannot drive down the highway in Lower Manhattan at all. It is all now being a staging area. So when talk about the West Side Highway, don't think of it so much as a highway right now, think of it as a very long and important parking lot, because that's what it is.

There are people down at the base of the building still. And there were people in the building that are, as both Martin and John have reported, had being told to get out. It is not clear to me -- and maybe, Martin, you hear me best right now -- it's not clear to me how many people were in the building at the time and who precisely those people are. Are those medical personnel?

SAVIDGE: Well, I think these were people that were working for the various reasons that you explained. Yes, they were medical personnel in there. I think they were using it for storing equipment, also feeding and looking after in general the many, many hundreds and in fact over thousands of volunteers that are down here, as well as the professionals. It was thought to be a good place to put them, because of the fact that it was a building that was relatively new and thought, at least up until this point, relative stable. And it remains to be seen exactly if there is going to be a serious problem at this point. But we do know the evacuation has apparently taken place, and we also know that activity out here has come to a standstill for some reason. And this might actually be what it is. The question is, how long does it go on.

And if the building is such a threat, if there really is this problem, do they begin thinking about the prospect of bringing it down intentionally. There are a lot of reasons why you would want to, there are a lot of reasons why you would not. Number one is the fact that you would have be very careful how you brought it down, but of course any impact on the ground is likely to shift that debris pile. It is going to affect the opportunities and the possibilities of getting to those that may be trapped beneath the ground, and the hope is that if there are survivors, that's where they are, anywhere on the six levels that extended deep below the World Trade Center buildings. So...

BROWN: I think all of us...

SAVIDGE: ... they're not really sure.

BROWN: I think all of us -- you, me, all of our you viewers -- have seen these planned implosions of buildings. And they are very complicated operations, and it requires that people go into the buildings, placing explosives in very precise places so that the building implodes, doesn't go out.

The problem in Lower Manhattan is that it's very tight. It's not that there is a lot of room for debris to fall without causing a problem. And as Martin pointed out a couple minutes ago, the sense here was that when the plane hit, it created -- or when the buildings collapsed -- it created essentially an earthquake.

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