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American Morning

America Under Attack: Look at Some of the Cars Pulled from Ground Zero in New York City

Aired September 13, 2001 - 10:20   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 check in with Michael Okwu, who just about a half hour ago, gave us a stunning, stunning view of just how devastating this attack was in New York.

Now, Michael, before you go any further, you need to establish for us when you show us pictures of these cars, if these cars were parked blocks away from what was once the World Trade Center complex or if they have actually been pulled out from the wreckage.

MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Paul, I didn't quite think I understood all of your question. But yes, these cars were pulled from very close to ground zero.

And if you look at the image that we have first given you, it certainly looks like the images of a war zone. And in fact, that's what it must have been. Indeed, what you are looking at is a car that was pulled out from somewhere close to what were the -- what was the World Trade Center, some place very close to the Twin Towers, just a few blocks south of where we are right now, just a few blocks south in what was ground zero.

This car here, we believe was probably a police car. Because if you can look at the front dashboard, you can see the radio display at the computer terminal, or what was once a computer terminal, and a computer keyboard. We also found some police reports in the car. So it's unclear, of course, whether this car was a vehicle that had been stationed there, or whether this person or the crew that was driving this car were responding to the scene.

If you look just down past here, you'll see two cars. And from this vantage point, you can get a really good sense, I think, of the impact, the profound impact of this blast, unrecognizable other than that the fact that you can see what was once an engine, completely covered in debris, and soot, and what was once a wheel. Obviously, these were steel radial belted wheels, and now, what is left are just the stringy wires around the rim of this thing.

You know, as I have been spending some time down on this street, which has become a pretty important artery, we've been seeing rescue workers coming in and out. Some of the new rescue workers who are relieving the folks who have been working all night, some of them arm and arm, hands over each other hands over their shoulders, clearly getting very emotional about this. A lot of pedestrian have walked by this street, and they stop whenever they see these vehicles which were obviously pulled so that the rescue workers can continue doing their very good work. And they look at these vehicles with complete incredulity.

I see many of them standing there, Sometimes two or three at a time, friends or family who obviously live in the neighborhood, look at these cars, gazing. And I think these car, seeing the shell of these cars is giving a lot of people, at least the people who live here, maybe some of our viewers at home, just a true sense of what the impact must have been like, and what it must have been like to be one of the many thousands of people who were there when the impact first occurred.

Just down here, we have a car that's in slightly better shape. But tells a story in its own way. Maybe it was a few blocks farther away, father north, slightly further away from the impact. And as you can see, on its front window, the words squalled W-A-R, war, because I suppose that's what it feels like -- Paula.

ZAHN: Boy, I will take you -- tell you, it will take a while for anybody to digest the images that you are see now.

Michael, I know that it's difficult to get any information out of the rescue workers now. Obviously, everyone is working so hard to try to perhaps even rescue folks at this time. Have you been given any information from paramedics about what is going on at ground zero?

OKWU: Well, what we have heard right now is that people are working tirelessly, they are working in very long shifts, that they are getting very emotionally involved of what they are trying to find. I am trying not to be gruesome about this and to be accurate about it, but to be honest with you, they are finding more body parts than they are actually finding bodies. And some of the rescue workers obviously getting very emotionally attached to this particular task, saying they are concerned there -- there are some people who may never be identified, whose entire bodies may never be found.

We've also talked to somebody who's been intimately involved in the rescue and search effort, who tells us that they found of what they believe to be at least one of the wheels of one of the planes that crashed into the twin towers four blocks away from where the twin towers were. So, again, that gives your sense of what the impact was like. And there's no telling what else we may find within this perimeter.

It's interesting, the rescue workers are working right inside what you would call ground zero, or the heart of the explosion and the blast. But when you talk to more rescue workers and you talk to police officers and other local authorities here, they will tell you that the damage that was sustained by that blast spread many blocks beyond that, and I think that just by telling you that the wheel of one of the planes, what they believed to be one of the planes, found blocks away gives you some sense of that.

ZAHN: Michael, can you tell us if the smoke seems any thicker down here. From our platforms it appears that the winds have shifted a little bit, that the plume is even larger than an hour ago?

OKWU: Right. Well I can tell you this much, it may be because I am getting used to this, which is probably bad news, but it doesn't quite feel the way that it felt even just 30 minutes ago. It's constantly changing. I will ask William if you can swing by and look up here. We are underneath essentially what has become a very, very recognizable plume of smoke. You can see this from just about any place in Manhattan right now, and in fact, you can see it from New Jersey, you can see it from parts of the other boroughs outside of Manhattan, from Brooklyn to Queens, and what I can tell you is that, it's been very interesting -- again, one of the many vehicles that passes as we have been standing here for the past hour or so.

What I can tell us that it doesn't feel as, as severe as it was. It smelled very much like you were standing in the middle of the embers of a bonfire. It no longer smells that way. The colors of this cloud seem to change by the minute. Just moments ago, it was a very thick black, and now it looks like a white, sort of grayish, as if you are almost flying through the clouds in the air -- Paula.

OKWU: All right. Thank you, Michael.

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