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American Morning

America's New War: Firefighters Document Work Their Colleagues Doing in New York; Pilots in Nevada Ready for War Against Terrorism

Aired September 19, 2001 - 10:32   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, I wanted to introduce you to Amy Steelman and Lou Angeli. Both of them have been firefighters throughout their adult life. They are here in New York to help document what their fellow colleagues are up against in trying to -- even at this hour, look for those that are alive, and although the mayor telling us those hopes are fading.

You, first of all, have information from the scene. What is the latest from ground zero?

LOU ANGELI, FIREFIGHTER/VIDEOGRAPHER: The -- as we spoke to the incident commanders and different fire officials, rescue officials, they're now considering the debris pile to be a hot zone, which indicates their is the presence of hazardous materials, and whenever that happens, they begin to pull firefighters, rescue people off the pile. And unfortunately, I think that probably signals the fact that this recovery effort will end soon.

ZAHN: And the mayor has pretty much told us that over the last two days. But in terms of any ongoing effort to clean up that area, if that hot zone is there, what does that mean? You're pulling firefighters out? You have to wait until it burns itself out? Or is there even danger to firefighters who are in the perimeter area?

ANGELI: There's a danger to anyone in the immediate area, especially those who are working on the piles. We do not have the proper equipment to work on those piles if it is a hazardous materials equip. You have to wear encapsulated suits, breathing apparatus, and that's just very difficult to do.

ZAHN: What in there?

ANGELI: The burning debris for one, and who knows what's burning.

ZAHN: But I'm wondering what has changed. It's the same debris site.

ANGELI: Well, it's the same debris site. It's starting to break down.

AMY STEELMAN, FIREFIGHTER/VIDEOGRAPHER: It may be the same debris site, however, we have uncovered layer after after layer of these floors that have compacted so much that are areas where the void was so small I could barely pass my hand between...

ZAHN: Let's take a look at what you saw when you went into this area, that no other camera has been able to record. Describe what you are seeing.

ANGELI: We're deep inside an 80-foot crater, which was at one time tower two. These are firefighters from New York City and from the Indianapolis area who are working together. These folks have never met each other, never worked with each other, but they are working together here and they have found a hole, and as you can see, this firefighter's crawling out of hole, and he's just discovered the fact that there's a pathway to a promenade level, which includes a shopping center that is intact, and a rail system. So that was pretty interesting for us.

ZAHN: Have any more bodies been discovered in this area?

ANGELI: No, they've identified areas were there are some bodies. But to -- for them to actually get in there and recover those bodies would be very difficult because of the different layering. And as you can see, 20 floors have been compacted into area that's roughly two stories high.

ZAHN: Look at that. It's got to be incredibly dangerous for anyone to crawl through that. Did you go beyond that opening?

ANGELI: We went down into the opening, and went down into the promenade level. It was kind of spooky. But once you get in there, it's kind of surreal, sort of like working -- or being in a motion picture. That area is intact.

ZAHN: What do you mean by that? The windows are blown out certainly, no?

ANGELI: Well, it's a subterranean area. There was a Starbucks.

ZAHN: And you can still see those facades.

ANGELI: You can still see those facades. There were escalators leading down to the subway...

ZAHN: Those were not damaged.

ANGELI: Those were not damaged, and the subway in both directions were cleared.

ZAHN: So why does everybody seem to indicate that there's no chance of life down there? You've been on these other rescue missions. People have lived beyond seven days.

ANGELI: That's true, and if there are some resourceful people, and depending on what other subterranean areas are intact, it could very well be that a resourceful group of people could find food and water and have survived this. Actually the chances are pretty slim at this point.

ZAHN: No signs of life.

STEELMAN: No signs of life at all.

ZAHN: What about presence of water? Some folks talked about sprinkler systems going off and sort of flooding the subways areas that I guess were below the ground level. Did you see water?

ANGELI: The path system leading into New Jersey is flooded. And I don't know that so much that was the actual sprinkler system as it was the firefighter pointing water constantly on to the blaze to get to the smoldering fires.

ZAHN: Last question for you. How concerned are you that more of your colleagues might get hurt down there?

STEELMAN: You know, every day as we move more debris, layer by layer, the stability of the buildings in that area become far more vulnerable to collapse. They were talking the other night when we were out there, even the cranes, they were worried about the road collapsing underneath the cranes, so we are doing job, we are trying to get the debris out and look for any signs of life. And as we proceed, ti becomes much more tenuous.

ZAHN: Well, we wish you continued good luck as you assist all your hard-working colleagues out there. We have been amazed. We heard stories about how some of your fellow firefighters don't even want to leave the scene when they are told their shift is up.

STEELMAN: They don't.

ZAHN: Amy and Lou, thanks very much for letting out peek at video you have shot to document this horrendous tragedy.

Time to shift our focus to Kyra Phillips, standing by in Fallon, Nevada, where pilots preparing for possible military action against terrorism.

Hi, Krya.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Paula. Good to see you this morning.

Actually the name of the center that we're actually will focus on is NSAWC, and that's the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center. Basically, every aviator in some or another way comes through here to become better. And behind me you see an F-14. This is just one squadron that's training for whatever mission it's called to.

I'm going to ask Admiral Richard Naughton to come in here and talk to us a little bit more about the base.

Good morning, sir.

REAR ADM. RICHARD NAUGHTON, U.S. NAVY: Good morning. How are you? Pleasure to be here. PHILLIPS: Tell us about the training that's going on. We talked about the fighter training. What about helicopter? The Seahawks, this is another aspect of training?

NAUGHTON: When we formed the Top Gun school in 1967, as we evolved that process, we worked through, and we realized how much better our people were and how much better our fighter pilots and our attack pilots were, so we took that process and we involved it into the helicopter, and the helicopter training. In the last two years, we have had what we had what we call the Seahawk weapons and tactics instructors, and every squadron now has a weapons and tactics instructor in it to make them better, more integrated. As a matter of fact, one of the primary missions of the Navy Seahawk airlines that are sea, is when we are operating near the coast is combat search-and- rescue.

And just last summer, in June, we had largest combat search-and- rescue exercise right here at Fallon, in the ranges here at Fallon, because of the facilities we have here, because of the things we have here.

PHILLIPS: Talk about those ranges. You mentioned range, and this is a pretty exciting part about what you do here.

NAUGHTON: One of the things about operating northern Nevada is that we have -- if you look to the east of where we're standing, we have about the size of the state of Connecticut, a range where we operate over, that's all instrumented, has live targets in it, has inert targets, has high-fidelity targets, where all of our aviators can train in all their mission areas, be that mission air-to-air warfare, be that mission air-to-ground warfare, or be that missionary combat search and rescue, or noncombatant evacuations, or anything like that. So we have an incredible facility here. Every aviator who trains, from an individual to an air wing to a battle group is -- are the folks that come here all the time, and this is our 7th airwing we've had here in the last 13 months.

PHILLIPS: Jag nine. We've been talking about them. They're coming through and practicing on their training missions.

NAUGHTON: They're in their second week, and each week, it will get a little more difficult.

PHILLIPS: We look forward to watching that too.

Finally, I've got to ask you, how do you feel about military readiness? I'm here, seeing the training going on. It's very intense. I don't think the American public realizes all you do here, and how serious everyone takes the training here. How do you feel about military readiness? And if the president makes a call that any squadron has to go, how do you feel?

NAUGHTON: The squadron that we deploy are as ready as they possibly can be. In squadrons where airwing nine is right now is there working getting closer and closer to deployment. And airwing one has just got underway on the USS Theodore Roosevelt today from Norfolk. They are very, very ready. It's the airwings that come along behind. If the airwings that are back in the states that are in the first part of their training, that's where we are concerned about. When the airwing, when you see airwing nine here, they have their people, their parts, their aircraft. They are ready to do the training. So at that point, they are very, very ready, but that's -- it's the time before that, that we're concerned about, to be sure that we don't let our readiness get too low when they return from deployment.

PHILLIPS: Admiral Richard Naughton, thank you so much, sir.

Thank you. It's my pleasure. We are glad to have you here.

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