Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live At Daybreak
America Under Attack: Survivor's Stories
Aired September 14, 2001 - 07:04 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 check in with Deborah Feyerick, who joins us from the Manhattan armory. This is the place where I think most of New York has witnessed some of the harshest heartbreak -- Deborah, what's going on there right now?
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Paula, right now a very rainy morning here in the city, not too many people showing up yet. But this is the armory. This is where mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands have wives have been coming in. They are filling out missing person's reports, about an eight page questionnaire all filled with details of their loved ones that are now missing.
As you approach the armory, just to give you a sense of what it is like, the entire area is basically plastered with these kinds of photos all over the place, snapshots of the people who are missing.
This man here, John Sharf (ph), he is 29 years old, 6'3". It lists identifying tattoos, an eagle with an American flag. Over here, Brook Jackman (ph). She was last heard from 9:11:01. She was on the 104th floor of Cantor Fitzgerald. A little saying here, it says, "worried sick." These are all of the details of people who simply have not been heard from since this blast took place.
Now, yesterday this area was packed with hundreds of people. They came here to get whatever information they possibly could on the folks that are missing. There are two lists that are located here at the armory. One has names of people at local area hospitals. The people who are showing up here have been going hospital by hospital by hospital trying to get information, hoping that perhaps their loved ones may simply be unconscious, not in a state to have filed reports as to where they are.
There's also a second list. That list has the names of the dead.
I want to speak to this man over here. His name is Janey Kabah (ph). His brother, Mohammed Jawara (ph), was a security guard at the World Trade Center at Windows On the World. He showed up for an 8:00 a.m. shift. He has been frantically calling the cell phone, his pager and has heard no information yet.
You have come to the armory this morning. What kind of information do you hope to get here? JANEY KABAH: I just want to know where he is and if he is alive we want to know that because we have no information about him since last Monday.
FEYERICK: Have you heard anything from Windows On the World, from the personnel there?
KABAH: Yes, they gave us some information, 800 numbers but we kept calling that number and the number is busy. No one is answering us. So we come here today.
FEYERICK: OK. And yesterday, you told me that there were so many people that you got discouraged. That's why you're here already. It's -- well, you were here since what time in the morning?
KABAH: I was here since 6:00 a.m. in the morning. I'm trying to get here earlier because yesterday I couldn't get through to do anything about it.
FEYERICK: All right, thank you very much. We appreciate your joining us this morning.
And just, Paula, to show you a little more of what's going on here, again, all of these pictures just life a happier time before this all happened and, you know, some are duplicates. Here we have a wedding photo, a young man, Craig Staub (ph). Here you have a father with his children and it says, "Hurry home, daddy." Also, "Please keep the faith."
And, you know, you wonder in all these pictures which of them might still be alive, which may be buried in the rubble. There is a sign here that really sums it up. It says anything if possible when you believe -- Paula.
ZAHN: And Deborah, I know that many of the rescue workers and paramedics you have talked to have said the same thing when I've talked with them, which is basically they're not giving up hope. They have a reason to believe there may be some people still trapped inside the wreckage and that's why those rescue efforts continue in earnest this morning.
Thanks so much.
Joining us right now is Jill Gartenberg, who is among the many thousands of Americans who still aren't clear on what has happened to loved ones. Welcome, Jill.
JILL GARTENBERG, HUSBAND IS MISSING: Thank you.
ZAHN: Thank you very much for joining us.
GARTENBERG: Thank you.
ZAHN: You're missing your husband.
GARTENBERG: Right. ZAHN: Tell us a little bit about what happened on Tuesday.
GARTENBERG: He went to go to work, said good-bye to my daughter and myself probably for the last time. Called my office, I got to my office probably two minutes after he left his first message on my machine saying there was a fire in his building on his floor. He didn't know if he was going to make it. I then spoke to him numerous times, I don't know, three, four, five times up until about 10:00 a.m.
He was...
ZAHN: What was he telling you during the phone call?
GARTENBERG: Mostly that he loves me and he loves my daughter, who's 2 1/2, and that he's there with one other woman in his office, Patricia, and it was just the two of them who were there and that they were stuck on the 86th floor because there was debris and smoke and fire outside of their offices so they couldn't go anywhere. They couldn't get to a stairwell.
ZAHN: But after the last phone call he made to you, he also made other phone calls...
GARTENBERG: He made numerous phones calls.
ZAHN: Who did he talk to after that?
GARTENBERG: Friends and his mom and his sister. He called friends. He has friends all over the country. He called -- I mean when I went to call his friends later on in the afternoon they had, most of them had spoken to him. He was obviously very busy on the phone. He was on the cell phone and on the phones in the offices, which were working. He was on the phone a lot with -- his company was Julian Steadly (ph) and he was on the phone with the midtown office a lot and they were providing a lot of support for him and, you know, kind of giving him ideas of what to do and what one needs to do and has to do in a crisis like that.
ZAHN: When is the last contact anybody had with him?
GARTENBERG: I don't know if it was me or somebody else. It was, I think, a little before 10 and when I spoke to him he said that it was getting a little smokier. And I said well just stay down because, you know, I don't know what else to tell him. And he said he was trying to but the phones kept ringing and he wanted to stay by the door because in case somebody did come to save them, you know, he wanted to stay by the door.
So I don't know if I was the last one he spoke to.
ZAHN: But in your last phone call he still seemed hopeful he could get out of there?
GARTENBERG: He was, the whole time he was very calm. I mean he's just this kind of person who in any crisis situation, obviously this, what's worse than this? He is very calm. I mean he really was very calm.
ZAHN: Do you have reason to believe he ever got off that floor?
GARTENBERG: No, I don't because I didn't speak to him that much more. I mean I think his One World Trade collapsed around 10:30 and I don't remember exactly the time and what time I spoke to him, but there's no way. I mean he, they, you know, he spoke to 911 and he spoke to his office, you know, his other offices and everybody told him to stay put. There was no place for him to go. He couldn't get to a stairwell because of the smoke and the fire and the debris. He couldn't get anywhere else.
So when somebody tells you what to do, you do it in that kind of situation. And then it collapsed.
ZAHN: Jill, I know this will be tough for you to listen to, but we have heard of so many phone calls that were made from victims to family members and we do have some audio of one of those phone calls that we'd like to listen in to right now.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
PHONE MESSAGE VOICE: Messages, Tuesday, 8:48 a.m.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jill, there's a fire on my floor. I love you. Tell everyone I love you. I don't know if I'm going to be OK. So, I love you so much.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
ZAHN: I guess I find it so hard to believe that anyone even had the presence of mind to make phone calls like that at a time when they knew things were very, very bad.
GARTENBERG: Right. That was my husband, that was my husband calling me. That was actually the very first message he left for me when he first -- he didn't know. Of course, I don't think he ever knew it was terrorism, you know? He said, he called me back subsequently and told me a plane had crashed into the building, which isn't so crazy in the World Trade Center, you know, I suppose. I didn't think terrorism at all.
And subsequent phone calls he was very calm. That was the initial phone call and then, you know, following that he sounded so calm and he said, you know, we're going to be OK here. He called ABC News and he spoke with them on the phone. And, you know, you can hear -- I didn't hear his voice, but a lot of people called in and said that they heard it and that he was saying that he was going to be OK and tell loved ones that they were going to be OK and they were safe on the 86th floor.
ZAHN: You have some pictures of your husband you brought along that you'd like to show everybody this morning?
GARTENBERG: Yes. ZAHN: These are pictures taken during obviously much happier times. If you would just hold them up, actually, I'll help you hold them up right here.
GARTENBERG: OK.
ZAHN: Tell us a little bit about your daughter and her understanding or lack of understanding of anything going on right now.
GARTENBERG: Right. My daughter Nicole is 2 1/2 years old. And she, you know, is full of life just like him. You know, he enjoyed life. He enjoyed every day of life. And he did it with her and with me and with the rest of his family and friends. That was all important to him. And, you know, she just loved seeing her daddy and, you know, she's asked where her daddy is and I said he's not coming home, you know? She can't understand any more than that. And I don't think she can even understand that, you know? Because a lot, you know, he's a hard worker and he works late and he leaves early in the morning so I don't think she understands that he's really not coming home.
ZAHN: The trauma of this is so difficult for anyone to bear, but you're also pregnant right now.
GARTENBERG: Right.
ZAHN: Are you doing OK physically?
GARTENBERG: Yes, I guess as good as can be expected. I'm three and a half months pregnant and I think it's important for my daughter to have, you know, a sibling and family, since she probably is not going to have her daddy.
ZAHN: I know you told me earlier on this morning how gratified you've been by the outpouring of support that you've gotten from people in the city. Before we let you go, tell us a little bit about that, because there are so many other families that finds themselves in this same horrific state of unrest, and in your case, you don't have limbo but there are thousands of families that do.
GARTENBERG: Yes, right. Right. You know, I've obviously watched other interviews of other people and I say god, I feel bad for them. But wait, I feel bad for me. And I went to temple, at my temple, Sharitafil (ph). They had a special service held the other night. And they had, the rabbi asked people to go around and say who they had on their minds, who was missing.
And I stood up and had my daughter in my arms and said my husband her daddy, Jim Gartenberg. And, you know, everybody, you know, just felt for me and after that people came up to me and said I don't know you, but I want to give you a hug. And it was just, the support was overwhelming.
And family and friends, I mean people I haven't heard from in so many years, you know, just hear about it, you know, just feel for me.
ZAHN: Well, we are so sorry and our collective hearts go out to you and your family as you work your way through this.
GARTENBERG: Thank you. Thank you.
ZAHN: And, Jill, right now on the screen what I wanted to put up for our audience is a Web site address for folks who are missing family members, who -- as you may know, there are thousands of people in the hospitals, area hospitals around here, many of whom have not been identified who are fully expected some day to get out of the hospital.
So if you have a picture of a loved one that the city has not been able to make any sort of contact with, please download a picture to this address and CNN will do what it can to assist you in this process. That address, missing@cnn.com.
Again, Jill, thank you for joining us.
GARTENBERG: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
