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American Morning

New York Hospitals Ready To Handle Injured, But None Arriving

Aired September 12, 2001 - 09:06   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'm going to check in with Hilary Lane, who joins us from St. Vincent's Hospital, one of the critical centers that took in victims all day yesterday, last night. Hilary, give us an update as to what your hospital's dealing with at the moment.

HILARY LANE, ST. VINCENT'S HOSPITAL: Well, Paula, at about 7:45 eastern time this morning, officials here at St. Vincent's got a phone call that there had been survivors found in the rubble, as Gary has been reporting. The staff here geared up.

If you take a look behind me, you can see that there are numbers of doctors and nurses and emergency personnel on standby. But in the past hour or so only one person brought in and that was a man who collapsed immediately onto a stretcher and was wheeled into the hospital. And what really seems to be the story here, in the words of one doctor, it is catastrophic. In a word of another disappointing and absolutely sobering is that there are so many people standing around and so few patients who have been brought in.

The numbers at this point 365, only about 40 of those brought in overnight. The majority of those brought in were firefighters and rescue personnel. There have been four fatalities brought here one to an affiliated hospital.

Shortly -- a short while ago, we heard from one of the paramedics who had been on the scene as of 9 AM yesterday morning and here is how he described it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PARAMEDIC: Initially, I was there for about 15 minutes. There were a couple explosions that became dangerous. We grabbed one person. We commandeered an ambulance and just high-tailed it out of there.

My prayers are to the fellow firefighters, EMS, police officers that have died and hopefully we'll be able to get some more down -- I mean some more out of there.

We weren't able to get to the scene simply because it was very unsafe. So, please, if you can, everybody please pray for those that gone today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LANE : Now major burn patients have been some of the most serious injuries here and doctors say those were people who were able to make it out on their own yesterday.

And if you take a look at the rubble, you can see the delicate situation that the rescue workers have to go through in order to extricate anybody who might be alive. They are cheered anytime that they do receive some sort of communication. Some of it has been by cell phone but those cases are few and far between.

What one of the hospital officials here was telling me earlier is that the paramedics say that they stop about every 45 minutes and they check in for sound. They use special dogs to see if they can hear anything, if they can smell anything.

I'll let's you take a look. There's an ambulance pulling up behind me and shouts that there may be one of the firefighters inside. I can't confirm that for you at this point. But people moving into action here as they wait for any survivors to be brought in. Triple the staff as usual and the emergency room ready to handle any of the victims and doctors here are saying that the sort of casualties that are likely to see here today are going to be far worse than anything that they have seen yesterday.

As I mentioned earlier, that first phone call came in at about 7:45 with word that some of these rescue personnel might be on their way in here. Doctors were then saying that they hadn't seen anything at that point. They may have been transferred over to other centers to handle burns, maybe up to the trauma unit at Cornell or over to Bellevue, perhaps.

So that is the story here. It's very, very sobering to these people who are waiting to treat the victims, and very telling that many victims have not -- many more victims have not been brought in.

Paula?

ZAHN: Hilary Lane, thanks so much for that update.

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