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CNN Live At Daybreak
America's New War: New York Rescue Operation Continues
Aired September 18, 2001 - 07:34 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: City officials say they will continue to call it a rescue operation until all hope fades.
Joining us right now is Michael Okwu, who is very close to that area, with an update on what is going on right now -- good morning, Michael.
MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.
As you mentioned, in fact, the digging continues even amid the news of the numbers climbing, which Miles just referred to. This attack happened almost exactly a week ago at this point today and still the nightmare continues. And as each day passes, it becomes harder and harder to imagine that they will find life beneath the rubble and the soot and the steel of the World Trade Center.
Still, officials are, in fact, calling this a rescue mission. Rescue workers say they have hope very much like some of the family and friends of those people who are still missing say they have hope. They say that there are always miracles in disasters like this one and they're hoping that they will be associated with yet another miracle.
Some workers have been toiling here since the attacks of last Tuesday and they have been ordered to take some time off. As you can see, the smoke continues to rise, or rather now it sort of hovers over the site, over the lower tip of Manhattan, eerily replacing the twin towers on the skyline.
Fires are still raging deep within the rubble. The hydrants at the site have gone dry due to over use there and also due to some damage to the infrastructure in the area and they are now using water from fire hydrants as far as three and four blocks away. There is some concern among some fire officials here that those people who may have survived, who may have survived, found some cavity underneath the rubble, may be drowned by some of the over use of the water here.
There's been lots of activity overnight. Some of the emergency medical teams came in here overnight. There was a team of FBI agents who arrived early this morning, a reminder constantly that this is not just the site of a disaster, but it is also the site of a crime scene.
I should mention that the mayor is due to arrive here today. He is going to be taking two tours of the site, one with some senators from Washington, D.C. and another with the secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, later this afternoon. The city will be very quiet today. Certainly it has been quiet for all of this past week in lower Manhattan. Today, there are two Rosh Hashanah services that will be held at the site, a celebration of the Jewish New Year -- Paula.
ZAHN: Michael, can you confirm for us this morning a ball park figure of how many rescue workers are on the scene? I know you said some of those folks have been encouraged to finally take some time off. Are we talking about thousands of folks?
OKWU: We're talking about thousands here. Estimates are that there are about 2,000 rescue workers on the scene and it depends on who you talk to. The fire department and some of the federal workers here and volunteer workers, they all have sort of different shifts.
Some of the fire officials that we spoke to -- I should say some of the firefighters that we spoke to told us that they have been working in 24 hour shifts, 24 hours on, 24 hours off. And, again, totaling something like 2,000.
ZAHN: And Michael, the other thing that I think we need to call attention to is just how painstaking this process is. They actually have a brigade they call right now the bucket brigade. And what are the responsibilities of the firefighters who are working on those brigades? They're just picking up small pieces of debris?
OKWU: It's really interesting. What happens is on the one hand you have these big cranes that have, they have placed here to take a lot of the heavy debris. There's lots of steel and concrete. And, in fact, one fire official told us it's almost like a layer cake, that they take a lot of the rubble off, and they've done this already, a lot of the rubble is out of here. But then they'll find this twisted steel underneath. And once they take that steel and they weld it off and they cart that away on these cranes, then there's absolutely more rubble underneath that.
So they've removed some of that rubble on the one hand. And on the other hand, there are these bucket brigades, with the fire officials essentially supervising these areas where they literally lift the rock with their bare hands and gloves and pass it from one to the other right up this sort of daisy chain.
ZAHN: All right, Michael Okwu, we will continue to check in with you throughout the morning. Thanks for that report.
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