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CNN Live At Daybreak

America Under Attack: NY Hospitals Busy, Airports Quiet

Aired September 13, 2001 - 07:09   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: at the hospitals all around New York, medical personnel are taxed trying to take care of severely injured people, many of them burned, many of them facing severe trauma.

Brian Palmer is at St. Vincent's Hospital -- Brian.

BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles.

We are, indeed, in front of St. Vincent's. You can see the streets behind us are actually quite quiet. There is an auxiliary police officer was just brought in a few minutes ago with respiratory problems. About 453 people have been through the E.R. at St. Vincent's, 263 at affiliated hospitals in the other boroughs, not the numbers that they were expecting, not the numbers that they were hoping.

Now, four people who were pulled from the rubble yesterday were actually brought to Bellevue Hospital. But most, in fact, according to a hospital spokesman, all of the emergency services personnel were brought here to St. Vincent's. St. Vincent's will most likely emerge as the trauma center, pretty much the main trauma center in Manhattan north of the blast zone because of the state of emergency announced by Mayor Giuliani last night.

From 14th Street north to the southern tip of Manhattan, this is a frozen zone. Authorized vehicles, police vehicles, emergency vehicles only and whatever vehicles get permission from the police department.

Now, hospital spokesmen also repeated the mayor's announcement last night that a citywide patient services center is being set up at the Lexington Avenue armory, which is on the east side of Manhattan, where people can come to file missing person's reports, and it's also going to be a clearinghouse. There will be grief counselors on site -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Brian, do you have any sense how many patients at these hospitals might, in fact, be unidentified right now? There are a lot of families obviously trying to be reunited with people who they think might be injured and under the care of one of these hospitals.

PALMER: Miles, there's not a lot of information of that level of specificity coming out. What people are suggesting is that they do contact the authorities and I think the citywide patient services facility is going to be functioning and people will be able to go to that center and also call to get that kind of information.

O'BRIEN: And one other thing, fatigue has got to be setting in among the medical personnel, obviously way over taxed. Are they getting enough support from other hospitals, other areas to get them through this?

PALMER: Well, Miles, it's sort of astounding because we've been, all of us around here have been up around the clock collecting information, but these people are actually treating the injured. And it's truly phenomenal. There are volunteers coming from all over the country. We ran into people from as far south as Texas, people from Massachusetts. So folks are being spelled. They are being relieved. But I think they are being pretty over burdened.

Now, here at St. Vincent's, the onslaught of injured people that they braced for did not come, which is not a great sign. It leads people to believe that perhaps there are not a lot more, there just aren't tremendous numbers of injured and that they may be pulling more bodies out of the blast site -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Brian Palmer at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, thank you very much for your time.

Let's turn it now to the White House. CNN's Kelly Wallace on the north lawn with word that the nation's air traffic, the nation's airports might be on their way to some resumption of normalcy -- Kelly.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, yes. I was just handed a statement coming from the transportation secretary, Norman Mineta. Here's what we can tell you. The secretary has ordered the national air space system reopened to commercial and private aviation effective 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time today. Now, that's for commercial and private aviation. That's the air space system. The secretary saying, though, that decisions about reopening airports will be made on a case by case basis.

So again, for people listening, sitting out there at home, each individual airport, decisions being made on a case by case basis. But overall the national air space system open for commercial and private traffic, decisions, though, made for individual air space, individual airports.

Secretary Mineta saying this decision made after a series of meetings throughout the day and into last night. The secretary also saying that anyone planning on flying should check with the airline regarding the level of service and flight schedules and to be sure to allow plenty of time to deal with the new security procedures.

As CNN has reported all throughout the day yesterday, the secretary ordering new security guidelines in place. Some of those guidelines include an end to curbside check-in, many more searches going on of passengers and of luggage, and also, as we know, no knives allowed to be transported onto planes.

That's the latest from here, Miles. Back to you. O'BRIEN: Kelly, is it safe to presume then, if Mr. Mineta is issuing this, that all airports have basically indicated they're complying with the new rules?

WALLACE: Well, I don't want to go too far here, Miles, to be perfectly frank and honest. Just handed this information. Obviously the FAA has issued a directive yesterday calling on all the nation's airports to impose new security guidelines and until airports adhere and implement those guidelines, they are not able to reopen. So you can be assured, according to the federal government, that if any airports go ahead and open up for operations, that they will have those new guidelines and new security measures in place -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, CNN's Kelly Wallace at the White House.

Let's head across the Potomac River to CNN's Patty Davis, who is at Ronald Reagan National Airport -- Patty, it's hard to even describe the kind of logjam which has been created by this unprecedented grounding now for nearly 48 hours now, and it will extend beyond 48 hours. Any sense from the airlines there as to how long it will take to get things back to normal levels of flow?

PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's a really good question here and that's something that the airport authority is having to deal with. As far as this airport in terms of being ready, it says it is ready. But having their announcement coming out earlier, before the announcement from the Department of Transportation that the air space would be open today, earlier today Washington Reagan Airport had said that it would not be reopening for flights today.

Now, that may change, being that the national air space, it appears, has been reopened at about 11:00 a.m. this morning. But right now it is a virtual ghost town here at this airport, plane after plane sitting on the tarmac. Inside also the airport, virtually nobody, only janitors, a few workers for the airlines, as well.

As for Dulles Airport, it is unlikely, the airport authority says, that there will be flights operating there until late this afternoon, if at all. Of course that could change now that the air space is reopening.

Up to now, only flights that had been diverted were allowed to take, get into the skies, and in terms of when passengers, what passengers should be expecting once they do come back to the airports, here's what one of the airline passenger groups had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICIAL: The effect on airline passengers is going to be quite significant. You know, in the old days where you could get to the airport at the last minute and, you know, run through to the counter and the gate and get on the airplane, those days are gone. It's going to be a very long, slow process to get through multiple layers of security.

(END VIDEO CLIP) DAVIS: Now, New York airports, Newark, JFK, LaGuardia, also indicating that they are absolutely ready to accept passengers. They said that was depending on what the FAA did. It now appears that DOT has decided that it will reopen the air space at 11 o'clock -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, Patty, I think it's worth recapping for people who may be contemplating getting on a flight soon exactly what they might expect when they come to an airport.

DAVIS: Well, at the airports across the nation, heightened security. There are a lot more police officers there. Also, you cannot bring any knives of any kind on board any of these airplanes at all. We're talking even those pocket knives. You cannot do curbside check-ins here at the airport. You cannot check in off site. You cannot, if you have an e-ticket, you cannot go directly to the gate. The FAA is requiring that everybody, even if you have a hard ticket, perhaps your travel agent issued you a boarding pass, everybody, all those passengers are required to go to the gate -- to the ticket counter to actually check in, physically check in.

So it's going to be a longer process checking in. It's going to be a little bit more frustrating for passengers as they come to the airports today, perhaps through the rest of the week. But these security measures, these heightened security measures now in place -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Patty Davis at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington.

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