Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live At Daybreak
America's New War: Rescue Efforts Continue, Not Recovery Yet
Aired September 18, 2001 - 08:01 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 want to catch up with Michael Okwu, who is standing by not far from what is considered ground zero. This is, of course, where the rescue efforts are under way in earnest -- good morning, Michael.
What's the latest from there?
MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you mentioned -- good morning -- it has been one week since this terrible disaster. And as each day passes, it becomes harder and harder to imagine that there is life underneath the rubble. No one has been pulled out as a survivor since Wednesday of last week.
And as you can see this very recognizable plume of smoke continues to hover over the southern tip of Manhattan eerily replacing where the Twin Towers used to be.
Still, rescue workers here are calling this a rescue effort, not a recovery effort. Fires still rage deep within the rubble of the World Trade Center, and they can't completely put them out until they remove much of the debris that is in that particular area. One of the major concerns as workers dig deeper here is the support of the basement levels of the World Trade Center.
Just to give you some perspective on the space here. It's a very vast space. Rescue workers are counting on the fact that some of the victims have survived through it. They slipped down into this space. It is a 60 acre, 70-foot deep hole that was used to essentially house seven levels of shopping, parking and a subway train that supplied transportation from New Jersey into primarily the southern tip of Manhattan.
Now, structural engineers are very concerned that the rubble and the debris are the only things that are essentially shoring up the walls in this vast space. And what they're trying to do now is get some work down there, and that in and of itself is very difficult -- trying to get around that area to shore it up. And what they've been doing essentially is trying to get some materials to shore up some of the subway lines that are used as arteries into the southern tip of Manhattan. And they're going to be spending the next several days as you can imagine on that.
Now, throughout the course of the evening, there was a lot of activity down here. It is quiet in lower Manhattan. There is still very little electricity here. There is very little use of some hot water, and in many areas no running water at all. But there's still a sense of urgency here.
A team of FBI agents arrived here overnight, and then they left after some 20 minutes, an indication that this is not just the site of a disaster, but also very much a crime scene.
Mayor Giuliani is due to arrive here later this afternoon, along with, on his first tour, a couple of senators from Washington, D.C., and then the secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan.
And throughout the course of the evening as rescue workers continued to toil away, they were joined by a cleric who provided some sense of spiritual sustenance to these people here. The reports from many of the rescue workers and from some of the officials here is that there is a great deal of grief and anger. Many of the firefighters who are working here lost a lot of their brethren, and they continue to toil away in spite of the fact that they have been told, and in so many cases ordered, to take some time off -- Paula.
ZAHN: All right. Michael, just one quick question for you. You were referring to that massive structure that rescuers hope to be intact underneath what used to be Trade Tower 1 and Trade Tower 2.
Are they able to tell you on a typical day at that time of the day how many people might have been either parking a car or headed for a train?
Hundreds of people. No one has told us exactly, but you can imagine that there are thousands of people who travel there every day.
Now, people park there, that's true. But that's not the only traffic down there. The southern tip of Manhattan is used by many commuters entering New York, and it supplies -- it's a major artery, as you know, to other parts of Manhattan. So you have people coming in from New Jersey. There are tens of thousands of people that come in from New Jersey every day. There are tends of thousands of people that come in from Brooklyn just south of Manhattan.
And, of course, there is the largest borough in all of New York City who come in through the southern tip of Manhattan. And in fact there are many people who said that they saw one of the planes hit and later saw one of the towers fall down when they were on subway trains that were just about to go underground right here at the World Trade Center.
So, Paula, you can imagine that there are tens of thousands of people, possibly millions, who travel through this area. A specific number I can't give you.
ZAHN: Okay, Michael Okwu. Thanks so much.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
