Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Rescuers Held Back

Aired September 12, 2001 - 13:51   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.
AARON BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's a very unstable situation. When we got here, I guess almost an hour ago, we could see from where we are -- go ahead and zoom past me if you haven't -- we could see the front of building number seven. Now, all we can see is smoke. We can still see the fire truck pouring water, but it has moved. It was pouring water to the dead center of the building (AUDIO GAP).

If you drew a line in the middle of the street that was kind of aiming straight, it has now moved off to our right. The color of the smoke has changed. The density of the smoke has changed. We won't hazard a guess as to the significance or lack thereof of either of those things. We will tell you that there is a concern down below us about asbestos in the air. Cars are being marked.

There's an enormous amount of dust. The Trade Center buildings were very shiny and very big, but they were not necessarily new. They've been up there for a generation and there is some concern that asbestos has been shaken loose by the collapse of these buildings, and it is in the air. It is on the ground now and is almost volcanic looking dust. And it does, in fact, remind us of our coverage in 1980 of Mt. St. Helens transported to an urban situation. But it is one more danger down there that officials have to deal with, and everyone else in this city has to deal with.

We continue to draw information from many different sources. In about an hour-and-a-half, at about 3:30 Eastern Time, we expect the president's press secretary Ari Fleischer to brief reporters on everything that, at least the government, is willing to say and we'll be sharing that of course.

Down below, as he has been, is our Gary Tuchman. He joins us on the phone. Gary, tell me, I guess first, locate yourself for us, give us some sense of where you are and what you're seeing.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: ... from where the World Trade Center buildings use to stand, on Church Street. There's a familiar site to New Yorkers. You walk down Church Street and see you the majestic 110-story south tower of the World Trade Center. That was the Number Two World Trade Center. And now there's nothing there.

To talk about the smoke that you see and the ashes and the dust that you were just talking about, fire officials are telling us right now there are still spot fires they are trying to put out, including one in a restaurant. That's leading to some of the smoke. Regarding that dust, you're absolutely right. We've all been given masks. If you don't have the masks, you're throats get quickly irritated, you cough, and that's the scenario for everyone who's in this area right now. Almost everyone's wearing masks. But we can tell you that this area of New York City, which is one of the most crowded parts of Manhattan during the business day because it's the financial district, is now off limits to all members of the general public.

It's only emergency officials, police, fire, members of the National Guard. That is a site that is very hard to get use to, seeing members of the military with their helmets on surrounding the neighborhood. The people who live in the area have been told to evacuate. Some members of the news media have gotten in, like us, to report on what's going on here.

You know the feeling as we go through as we cover this are familiar. In 1993, we were here for the first terrorism incident at the World Trade Center, the bombing of the North Tower.

In '95, we were at Oklahoma City for the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, and now in 2001 we're here. But the magnitude of this is so hard to grasp because Mayor Rudy Giuliani is right, and there's no reason to doubt it, thousands of people have died outside these World Trade Center buildings and most of their bodies are still buried under tons of rubble.

We all hoped for lots of survivors when this first happened. There have been some survivors but certainly it's not a large number. Right now the count is nine: six firefighters, three police officials have been located. They are all expected to survive. We hope they find more survivors but, as of now, we've had no one tell us that any more than nine have been found -- Aaron.

BROWN: Let's walk through a couple of things on that. What officials and rescue teams are hoping for is that there is in these collapsed buildings, essentially, air pockets, or voids, that people have either managed to get into, or essentially it collapsed around them and they were able to stay alive, keep breathing. The problem is they can't get to the voids because it is so unstable -- Fair.

TUCHMAN: Very fair, Aaron. And that's one thing that fire officials are telling us. They believe there's potential for many of these so-called voids but they can't get to them yet. So that's why they are hopeful they'll find more survivors. One of the survivors who was in a void, one of the police officials with the port authority of New York and New Jersey, knew the World Trade Center building very well, was under rubble, in a void, his leg was pinned down by some of the rubble but he knew exactly where he was even though he couldn't see any daylight.

He got on his cell phone. He called emergency officials and told them where he was. Here's where you should dig. They dug. They found him. They were afraid they were going to have to amputate his leg to get him out but they were able to slip him out without taking off his leg. BROWN: One of the most frustrating scenes that we have seen in this, in fact, as we were making our way to where we're reporting from, coming down the West Side Highway, there's this string of vehicles, of rescue trucks, utility trucks, electric generators, garbage trucks with snowplows on that'll be used to clear debris, all of them waiting -- waiting until it is safe to go in and they could do what they need to do, which is to try and find anyone who may have survived this awful tragedy.

And you could see in their eyes the frustration that they are held away, that they can't do what they had been trained to do. And I dare say what they desperately want to do -- Lou.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com