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Giuliani: Chance of survivors is remote
©New York Times, NEW YORK -- Little more than mammoth knots of steel and pulverized concrete remain where the World Trade Center once stood, and city officials acknowledged Tuesday that it was unlikely that anyone, even in the underground concourses, survived the towers' collapse last week. "We have to prepare people for the overwhelming reality that the chance of recovering anyone alive is very, very small," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said. "We still hope and pray, but the chance is very, very small." It was the bluntest assessment yet from the mayor about the fate of more than 5,000 people still listed as missing in the trade center attack. A survivor was wrenched out of the rubble last Wednesday. Only bodies or parts of bodies have been recovered since. One encouraging bit of news, at least for the criminal investigation of the terror attacks, came late Tuesday, the New York Times reported, when a law enforcement official said that investigators may have picked up the pinging of a black box from one of the hijacked planes that hit the twin towers. Giuliani's grim appraisal of the search efforts foretold an impending shift in operations at the site of the devastation, away from the careful raking of debris in search of body parts to a more straightforward demolition job. Seven days after the disaster, contractors clearing rubble at the site said they had yet even to reach the area where the twin towers once stood, except occasionally with the aid of mechanical talons at the end of huge cranes. The city's fire commissioner, Thomas Von Essen, said the search and rescue operation at the scene had not yet changed. Then he added, "But it will, we believe, in a few days, if we continue to find what we're finding when we penetrate." Neither he nor the mayor would say what it is that rescuers are or are not finding when they do penetrate the dark crevices of the debris. "I think when we get closer to that," the mayor said, "we'll explain that." At the trade center site -- a 16-acre moonscape of twisted steel, gutted buildings and pyramids of crushed concrete -- the atmosphere already seemed different as the giant metal claws of heavy demolition equipment began attacking the mounds of debris. Fresh reinforcements in crisp navy blue uniforms replaced the soot-coated police officers who, just a day or two ago, sagged into abandoned chairs scattered on the edges of the rubble. The gray dust that coated the sidewalks has been swept and hosed away. The frenzied activity of the early days, sometimes fueled by sheer will and hope, has become a determined but systematic routine. Most of the bucket brigades, weary men who stood shoulder to shoulder passing 5-gallon pails of debris out of the smoldering piles of wreckage, have disbanded. Their white and orange buckets have been stacked along the perimeter of the devastation. Even the fires that had burned beneath rubble piles were spent. Most of the smoke and dust that had shrouded the area with a stinging pall has all but dissipated, laying bare the trade center's deformed remains. What workers have found has amazed and appalled them: Skyscrapers built of several millions of cubic yards of concrete seemed to have ground themselves into dust. Most of what they have seen on the exposed layers of debris has been pieces of the aluminum face of the twin towers, and mangled steel. They have not seen many chunks of concrete. The scene underground apparently is just as devastating. Transit officials said they estimated that 1,000 feet of the No. 1 subway line tunnel beneath the trade center, including the Cortlandt Street station, had collapsed. On the surface, the plaza area that once covered part of that concourse between the twin towers is now a gaping hole. The site has been divided into four rough quadrants and assigned to different contractors and heavy equipment operators. The situation at each one was different Tuesday. At the western edge of the site, crews finally managed to clear West Street of debris from a collapsed pedestrian bridge, allowing bigger cranes and excavators to be brought closer to the pile of compacted wreckage that once was 2 World Trade Center. At the northwest corner, three other construction companies are working to clear the damaged or destroyed buildings that stand in the way of access to parts of 1 World Trade Center. Two buildings, 5 and 6 World Trade Center, have essentially been gutted by fire, said Peter J. Davoren, a senior vice president of Turner Construction Co. The rubble that once was 7 World Trade Center, a building thought to have been evacuated before it was hit by debris from the tower collapse, is still burning. By late Tuesday, crews working from baskets suspended by cranes over the 7 World Trade Center wreckage were cutting lengths of twisted steel. "You're going to see a lot of the smaller machines, the ones that we were using for search and rescue to pick through areas, leave," said Anthony Novello, an owner of Nacirema Industries, a demolition company working in the northwest quadrant. "Now you're going to see the big ones, the 220,000-pound machines, that are not made for the gingerly removal." The magnitude of work still to be done is staggering. Giuliani said Tuesday that 49,553 tons of debris had been transported to the Fresh Kills landfill. The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that 600,000 tons of debris will have to be removed. The job could take six months.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
