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4,763 Missing in Trade Center Attack
Officials Clarify: Two Firefighters Rescued From Rubble

NEW YORK (Sept. 13) - The ghastly toll of the terrorist attack on the nation's largest city came into focus Thursday, as more than 4,700 people were reported missing in the devastation of the World Trade Center. President Bush said he would visit New York and thank its people for exhibiting ''the bravery of America.''

The grim process of combing tons and tons of rubble went on.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the city had some 30,000 body bags available to hold the pieces taken from the wreckage, and parts of 70 bodies had been recovered. There were just 94 confirmed dead; 30 or fewer had been identified. And 4,763 people had been reported missing.

''It could turn out we recover fewer than that; it could be more,'' Giuliani said. ''We don't know the answer.''

Bush said he would visit New York on Friday, and declared it a ''national day of prayer and remembrance.'' He asked Americans to spend their lunch breaks taking part in services at their chosen places of worship, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

In a call to Giuliani and New York Gov. George Pataki, Bush said he looked forward to thanking New Yorkers who ''made a huge display, for the world to see, of the compassion of America and the bravery of America.''

The president will find a reeling metropolis. A vast section of the city has been sealed off, as emergency workers struggled to cope with the unprecedented destruction.

Work was slowed by hellish bursts of flame and the collapse of the last standing section of one of the towers taken out by suicide jets.

The rescue efforts were once again hindered by the battered infrastructure in lower Manhattan. The top 10 floors of the 53-story One Liberty Plaza, near the Trade Center site, began buckling and forced the evacuation of some rescue workers Thursday afternoon.

At one point authorities said five Fire Department rescue workers had been extricated from the rubble, two days after they were entombed in a sport utility vehicle. It turned out there were just two men, and they were trapped in an underground air pocket only briefly on Thursday.

A day before, five people had been pulled alive from the Trade Center rubble - three of them police officers.

The effort in New York was mirrored at the Pentagon, where 126 people were believed to be dead - among them a three-star Army general - and 70 bodies had been recovered.

The total deaths at the Trade Center and the Pentagon - as well as those on board the planes that crashed into them and into a grassy field southeast of Pittsburgh - could bring the total to more than 5,000.

That would be higher than the death toll from Pearl Harbor and the Titanic combined. A total of 2,390 Americans died at Pearl Harbor nearly 60 years ago, and the sinking of the Titanic claimed 1,500 lives.

A thick cloud of acrid, white smoke blew through the streets Wednesday after the four-story fragment of the south tower fell. Gusts of flame occasionally jumped up as debris was removed from the smoldering wreckage.

The vast search to uncover the terrorist plot stretched from Miami to Boston to Portland, Maine, and on to Canada and Germany. Up to 50 people were involved in the attack, the Justice Department said, with at least four hijackers trained at U.S. flight schools. Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden remained a top suspect.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said authorities had ''thousands and thousands'' of leads. He said they had determined that 18 hijackers were on the planes: five on each of two planes and four on each of the other two.

In Washington, Bush worked with Congress on legislation authorizing military retaliation, and officials disclosed that the White House, Air Force One and the president himself had been targeted Tuesday.

America's NATO allies bolstered Bush's case for military action, declaring the terrorist attacks an assault on the alliance itself.

Ripples continued to spread. The National Football League called off the 15 games scheduled for this weekend, and all Division I-A college football games also were postponed. Major-league baseball extended its hiatus through the weekend.

But gradually, some sectors returned to normal. The government gave the go-ahead for commercial flights to resume and some did, but schedules were expected to be in disarray, and heavy security was the rule.

Bond trading resumed Thursday, while Wall Street officials said the stock markets were expected to open again on Monday. The shutdown on the New York Stock Exchange was already longer than the two-day closure at the end of World War II; the next-longest lasted a week, after the 1929 crash.

In New York, the landscape was a haze of gray dust, splayed girders, paper and boulders of broken concrete. Firefighters armed with cameras and listening devices on long poles searched for survivors. German shepherds and golden retrievers clambered over the debris, sniffing.

A morgue set up in a Brooks Brothers clothing store received remains a limb at a time.

Three financial companies with offices in the complex had more than 1,300 workers unaccounted for. MMC, an insurance firm, said it had not been able to account for 600 of 1,700 employees; Keefe Bruyette & Woods, a securities firm, said 67 of 171 employees were missing. Cantor Fitzgerald, a bond firm, said 680 of its 1,000-person staff were missing.

Giuliani was among those who escaped Tuesday's attack uninjured, bolting from a building barely a block from the site when the first of the towers collapsed.

More than 3,000 tons of rubble was taken by boat to a former Staten Island garbage dump, where the FBI and other investigators searched for evidence, hoping to find the planes' black boxes with clues to what happened in the final terrifying minutes before the crashes.

Insurance industry experts say the attack could become the nation's most expensive manmade disaster ever, with payouts ranging from $5 billion to $25 billion.

The densely packed bottom tip of the island, an area roughly five square miles, remained off-limits to everyone but emergency workers. Volunteers emerged from the search-and-rescue mission with grisly tales as they cleared away the twisted steel and glass wreckage of the twin towers.

One body was carried out wrapped in an American flag. When workers hung another American flag from a piece of a transmission tower that apparently survived the collapse, ''everybody stopped and saluted,'' said Parish Kelley, a firefighter from Ashburnham, Mass.

Kelley spent the day working in a crater left by the towers' collapse. As he picked through the rubble, he watched as a man's body - a cell phone still clutched in his hand - was carried out.

''We're looking at a pile of rubble 30 to 40 feet high. Where do you start?'' said sheriff's Sgt. Mike Goldberg of Hampden County, Mass., accompanying a search-and-rescue dog.

The discovery of a foot and leg and a ****pit seat led to speculation that one of the pilots had been found, Goldberg said.

For those looking for missing family members, there were unanswered questions. A family grief center set up in a Manhattan armory drew 2,500 family members on Wednesday. Thousands more were expected as the search mission continued.

Among the missing: at least 202 firefighters and possibly up to 350; 154 workers from the Port Authority; 57 NYPD and Port Authority police officers; 38 members of a Manhattan management company. The four hijacked planes carried 266 passengers and crew.

Also lost was John P. O'Neill, head of security for the World Trade Center and a former FBI expert on terrorism. O'Neill headed the investigations into the bombing of the USS Cole, along with the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

At Bellevue Hospital, a firefighter almost had to have his leg amputated so he could be freed from the rubble, said Pataki, who visited the hospital to thank medical workers and speak with patients.

The governor asked him why he would risk his life. The unidentified firefighter told him: ''What do you expect? I'm a New Yorker.''

Pentagon Says About 190 People Dead


WASHINGTON (Sept. 13) - Approximately 190 people perished in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon, and the Army suffered the heaviest blow with 74 people lost, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Human remains pulled from the Pentagon were being taken to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to be identified. The first two helicopters carrying remains arrived at the base early Thursday afternoon and more were expected, a base spokesman said.

In what it called an initial and preliminary estimate, the Pentagon said 126 people who were in the Pentagon at the time of the attack Tuesday were killed. All 64 aboard the hijacked American Airlines jetliner that slammed into the Pentagon also died, putting the death toll at 190.

The figure was the first official estimate by the Pentagon. In a brief announcement, the Pentagon said that although search efforts were continuing, the final tally of deaths is not expected to change significantly.

Members of Congress at the site Thursday to watch the recovery effort said they were told by rescue officials that much of the fuselage of the hijacked airplane that hit the Pentagon remains intact in the wreckage, which could help investigators.

``It hits you right in the pit of your stomach,'' Rep. Ken Lucas, D-Ky., said of the gaping hole in the building's side.

Of the Army's loss of 74 people, 21 were soldiers, 47 were Army civilians and six were Army contractors. The highest-ranking officer killed was Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel.

The Navy lost 42 people - 33 sailors and nine civilians. A partial list of names of the Navy people missing in the rubble, released by the Pentagon, showed that most were in their 20s or 30s.

The Marine Corps and the Air Force believe they suffered no personnel losses.

The Pentagon said defense agencies, which it did not identify by name, lost 10 people. One defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said seven of those worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

As of Thursday morning, about 70 bodies had been removed from the buckled section of the Pentagon as search-and-rescue workers toiled around the clock with little hope of finding more survivors.

The process of going through the rubble piece by piece and looking for remains is arduous, said Arlington, Va., Fire Chief Edward P. Plaugher. ``We're going to be there many, many days,'' he said.

FBI crews worked side-by-side, looking for evidence and making their way toward the flight-data and voice recorders of the commercial jetliner that was hijacked by terrorists and slammed into the Pentagon Tuesday.

``We're making inroads into the impact area foot by foot now,'' Fairfax County, Va., Fire Capt. Jerry Roussillon said Thursday after search-and-rescue teams worked through the night stabilizing the damaged parts of the building.

The workers were evacuated Thursday morning for about an hour following a telephoned bomb threat received by the FBI, officials said.

President Bush declared an emergency in Virginia, where the Pentagon is situated, to help rescue and recovery efforts. The declaration authorizes ``all federal resources necessary to meet urgent human needs and protect public health and safety.''

Arlington County, Va., fire marshal Shawn Kelley said searchers know ``the general area within the building where they can find the black box,'' the plane's voice and data recorders, but couldn't yet get there.

A small American flag planted on the roof spoke to the Pentagon's determination to restore its spirit despite the horrendous breach of its famous walls.

The little flag was replaced late in the day by a huge one. A dozen firefighters held the banner aloft on the roof, in a display timed to coincide with a visit from Bush. Then they draped it near the stricken section, a bold display of red, white and blue hanging two-thirds of the way down the wall.

Reopens Skies; Airports Get Off to Slow Start[/SIZE]

(Sept. 13) -- Airlines returned to the nation's skies with limited service Thursday as airports opened their doors to sparse, anxious crowds amid the tightest security since the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

At Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Sam Hemphill was among a dozen people lined up at a TWA ticket counter. He said he was nervous about flying but was determined to get home to Jacksonville, Fla.

''Whatever happens, happens,'' Hemphill said. ''You have to keep going. If you stop living life, they've won.''

The U.S. aviation system was shut down Tuesday after hijacked planes were crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. The first scattered flights Thursday came from abroad, carrying passengers who had been diverted to Canada when the terrorists struck.

The first commercial flight to leave Portland, Ore., since Tuesday got off the ground before noon - a Delta airliner headed for Kansas City, Mo. People at the food court cheered as the jet took off.

Lisa Adamson of Vancouver, Wash., who was among the passengers, said the East Coast terrorist attacks had made her jittery about flying.

''I feel nervous,'' she said.

Passengers flights also left New York's LaGuardia airport, with at least one of them flying over Manhattan, where smoke still rose from the trade center wreckage.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta cleared the way for commercial flights Thursday morning, saying airports would be opened and flights resumed on a case-by-case basis - and only after stringent new security measures are in place.

Among the new measures are a ban on curbside check-ins and visitors being allowed to pass through security checkpoints to pick up passengers at gates. Knives and other cutting tools, even plastic ones, are prohibited, and mail and cargo are temporarily banned from passenger airlines.

Mineta urged passengers to allow time to deal with the new procedures.

''There will be some inconveniences, but safety will be the first element of our system to be restored,'' Mineta said.

An Italian jet landed at Los Angeles International Airport, two days after it was diverted to Calgary, Canada, from Milan. Two dozen city and airport police stood watch inside the international terminal as Alitalia Flight 622, carrying 162 people, rolled in.

''It's very sad what happened and it's good to be home,'' passenger Raymond Civetello of Alhambra said as tears rolled down his face.

Another passenger, Angelica Bridges, 27, said every traveler was searched, every bag was checked by hand and no bags were put on the plane unless it was identified by a passenger.

Agents from the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Customs were deployed at airport security check points throughout the country. The heightened security measures are part a broad effort by federal law enforcement authorities to provide a larger police presence.

''We have taken every precaution to make sure it is safe to fly in America,'' President Bush said Thursday. ''There are beefed-up security in our airports, there's increased presence on the airplanes. Yes, if a family member asked if they should fly, I would say yes.''

However, major airlines warned that service would take days to return to normal. Some, including Delta, American and TWA, planned limited service Thursday.

Continental canceled all regularly scheduled flights for the day, but planned to offer special service in cities such as San Francisco and Cleveland, ''where we see demand,'' spokeswoman Erica Roy said.

United won't resume scheduled service until 9 a.m. EDT Friday.

The San Diego airport was largely deserted, with a few business and vacation travelers waiting for a spot on one of only a handful of flights expected to leave late Thursday. Skycaps and other airport employees, standing around in small groups talking, outnumbered passengers.

And while both Tulsa International and Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma were open, departures were limited because many airports throughout the country still were not accepting planes.

At Montreal's Dorval Airport, flights to the United States were still listed as canceled at 11 a.m. EDT, when flights were allowed to resume.

''We're being told that there are no flights on Northwest. Right now, they can't guarantee anything for a week,'' said Ana Belda of Alicante, Spain, who was waiting with her husband, two children and two friends for a flight to Detroit.

At T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I., travelers at the small regional airport took the delays and heightened security in stride, saying they were not nervous about flying.

''These things can happen 10 years from now or 10 years ago,'' said Iwona Godlewski, 34, who lives north of Boston and was flying to Sacramento, Calif. ''We can't shut down our lives.''

Most of the nation's air fleet was grounded Tuesday morning following the hijackings of jets from Boston, Newark, N.J., and Washington's Dulles airport. Even as the FAA imposed new restrictions on passengers, airlines and airports, members of Congress were pointing to security lapses.

Boston's Logan International Airport, where two of the hijacked flights originated, will remain closed indefinitely until new security measures are put in place, Massachusetts Port Authority executive director Virginia Buckingham said.

Newark International Airport reopened Thursday and Dulles International Airport planned service by evening. New York's airports reopened at 11 a.m., but passengers were not allowed inside the terminals for another two hours.

Israeli David Dajan, an engineer from Tel Aviv on a business trip, said he had to take a train from Boston to New York after the attacks.

''It's not something new for me,'' he said. ''Mentally, I know the feeling. If you start to fear, you stop you life.''

At Denver International Airport, Jay Jardim and his wife, Kim, of Silverthorne, Colo., hoped to get a flight to the New York area because Jardim's older brother was missing in the trade center attack.

Jardim's brother was on the 106th floor when the jet hit his tower. Jardim said his brother sent a quick text message but hasn't been heard from since.

''We're just hoping for some sort of priority list for not just us but all of the families of the victims,'' Jardim said.[SIZE=3]U.S.

Major Pro, College Sports Cancel Weekend Schedule NFL Decision Leads to Postponements

Professional and major college sports will shut down this weekend, following the lead of the NFL that said America needed time to mourn and reflect on this week's "horrific acts of terrorism.''

Major league baseball, several auto racing circuits, college football conferences and the country's largest soccer league all canceled competition.

"We understand those individuals in sports who want to play this weekend. We also can empathize with those who want to take the weekend off and resume their personal lives and professional careers next week,'' NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Thursday in a statement. "We strongly believe that the latter course of action is the right decision for the NFL.''

Some colleges and auto racing had wanted to play on, hoping to "bring our people together,'' but those decisions were reversed in many cases.

And after the NFL announced that it would not be playing on Sunday and Monday, a flurry of cancellations and postponements quickly followed.

Baseball postponed all games through Sunday. It will resume play the following day.

Commissioner Bud Selig said all players will wear American flags on their uniforms for the rest of the season, and the Stars and Stripes will be given to fans at all games Monday.

"The more I thought about it, I couldn't rationalize starting before Monday,'' he said.

Baseball will make up all the games by extending the regular season, which had been scheduled to end Sept. 30. The games will be rescheduled for the week of Oct. 1.

The Big Ten, Big 12 and Southeastern conferences reversed field and postponed all of their college football games a day after announcing its teams would play.

The three leagues joined the Atlantic Coast, Big East and Pac-10 conferences in calling off the games, meaning there will be no major-college football Saturday.

There were 116 games involving Division I-A and I-AA teams scheduled for this weekend, and it appeared only a handful -- if any -- would be played.

"There was real anxiety as the week went on on the part of our football team about traveling by air,'' said Bowling Green athletic director Paul Krebs, whose school pulled out of a game at South Carolina a few hours before the SEC reversed course and called off its games.

The NASCAR race in Loudon, N.H., was rescheduled for Friday, Nov. 23 -- the day after Thanksgiving.

"It was NASCAR's decision, but we agreed with them 100 percent,'' track owner Bob Bahre said.

It was only the second non-weather postponement for NASCAR in at least 30 years.

The Indy Racing League's season-ending race and a NASCAR trucks race scheduled this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway were postponed for three weeks. The decision to delay the races came a day after plans were made to run the races as scheduled without qualifying sessions.

"This has been a difficult process from the beginning,'' Texas Motor Speedway general manager Eddie Gossage said. "Opinions have been mixed.''

The NFL made its decision following talks with league owners, union leaders and the White House. It was the first time in the league's history that it called off games for a reason other than a strike.

A decision on whether to reschedule this weekend's games or play a 15-game regular season schedule is under consideration and will be announced as soon as possible, the NFL said.

The Bush administration provided only information, not a recommendation, said administration spokeswoman Anne Womack. Aides to President Bush kept league officials informed about such things as major memorial services that might conflict with games.

"We asked them to use their best judgment about whether to proceed,'' Womack said.

Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon left leagues struggling with how to get back to business without offending a nation grieving its dead.

"You can't have a stadium full of people having fun,'' St. Louis Cardinals second baseman Fernando Vina said, "because that's not what this is about now.''

With that sentiment in mind, baseball has put off 91 games to raise the possibility of World Series games being held in November for the first time. The postponements were the most for the national pastime since World War I.

Barry Bonds' pursuit of 70 homers, Roger Clemens' try for the first 20-1 start by a pitcher, and the pennant races were all put on hold with 2 1/2 weeks to go in the regular season.

Tagliabue was well aware of the decision by predecessor Pete Rozelle to go ahead with games two days after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. The late Rozelle long regretted that choice.

"I made the decision,'' Rozelle once said. "In retrospect, I wish I hadn't.''

Plenty of NFL players were adamant: Cancel the games.

"You know what? I'll forgo my weekly paycheck. This is serious,'' said defensive end Phil Hansen, the Buffalo Bills' players association representative.

Others were worried about flying to road games or thought it would be tough to concentrate on their jobs. But there were also those around the league who insisted the games must go on.

"From a personal standpoint -- not as a coach but as an American -- we want to play,'' said Brian Billick, coach of the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens. "I don't want cowards to dictate what we do in this country.''

[SkooL]

Hello smart one, try just sending a link and this is also off topic so try not crowding the Main forums with this.

[_AcidIce_]

I feel sad for those who died

Originally posted by _AcidIce_
I feel sad for those who died

Same here

[AlkarenHyralt]

[_AcidIce_]

I just hope we get a lot of people out of the rubble. I heard one guy jumped off the 80th floor or something and only broke his leg and survived I was like bullshit but they did show it on television a few times.

[_0AfTeRsHoCk0_]

Oh gee, not like I didn't know it has happened already, Let's take 20 min of my time to read this all...

[_AcidIce_]

But it helps a lot of people whp don't know that much about it.

[SkooL]

Originally posted by _AcidIce_
But it helps a lot of people whp don't know that much about it.

Are you stupid? It's kind of hard NOT to know about this. It is everywhere you look, the talk of everyone's day. The second they announced the crashing on our school's PA...I knew this was going to go on for weeks upon months.

[_AcidIce_]

But a lot of people don't know whats going on as in which how many have died or whatever .. Just calm down