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CNN Live Saturday

Work Continues at Ground Zero

Aired September 22, 2001 - 14:14   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.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: As the U.S. prepares for possible military action, the battle of a different sort continues to grind on here in New York City at ground zero, that's where CNN's Michael Okwu joins us live -- Michael.

MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Marty, good afternoon. You know, by all accounts, just on the very surface, it looks like a normal Saturday afternoon. People are trying to regain some sense of normalcy.

And, as you can see, this is a major thoroughfare. It essentially is Canal Street, and it separates the lower tip of Manhattan from the rest of the island. There's so many tourists and other pedestrians just filing through here, so many people coming by, stopping, talking, looking down the street, and, I think, sometimes looking up at the sky incredulously. Maybe on their last visit here, on their last walk, they looked up and they could see the Twin Towers, and of course, there are no Twin Towers to see today.

Police officers and other State officials have essentially cordoned off this area. They're becoming much more sensitive about our access to the site. It is not a normal day. After all, 6,333 people are missing and presumed dead. No one has been pulled out of the rubble alive since Wednesday of last week.

Overnight, rescue workers continued to sift through the dirt and the rubble, often times affected by the very high heat that emanates from fires that still rage deep within the rubble.

And, you know, Marty, there are also countless stories, heartbreaking stories, that are full of irony. There is the story of John O'Neal (ph). The Policy Commissioner here told us yesterday that Mr. O'Neal (ph) was recovered, that his body was recovered. He was a retired FBI agent whose focus was on terrorism, and he had just started a new job as the head of security at the World Trade Center. He was only on his second day when he died trying to rescue people in Tower Two.

And on a very interesting note, a strange note, there was also, in addition to bodies and potentially, hopefully, life in the rubble, there is buried treasure. We understand that there are hundreds of tons and gold and silver buried beneath the rubble. Now, this was gold and silver that had been stored at 4 World Trade Center at the division of the Bank of Nova Scotia. It was being stored for individual investors and companies as an investment. We are told that the value of that gold and silver is in excess of $253 million.

So I am sure that officials here are looking for life, and they're much more interested in finding life, but you can bet, they also have an eye out for that material as well -- Marty.

SAVIDGE: Michael, we know that when this tragedy first began, there were many crews that responded from all across the nation. I'm wondering now, have those crews been released as far as the search and rescue effort? And if so, have they been replaced by someone else?

OKWU: What my understand is from our vantage point -- and again, we've been pushed back a little bit from where most of the action is -- is that everybody who was here about a week ago, that is the companies that were involved here are still here. And what's happening, really, is that fresh replacements from those same units are coming in.

So there might have been people here from Boston and from Missouri, and just over the -- over the bridge and the tunnel in Long Island, who were here when this all started. And those people are being sent home slowly and getting fresh recruits to come back in -- Marty.

SAVIDGE: Michael Okwu, joining us live from the area around ground zero. Thank you very much.

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