New York mayor says 82 dead, thousands under ruins
( 2001-09-13 11:22 ) (7 )

Five survivors and 82 dead bodies have so far been recovered from the ruins of New York's World Trade Center, city mayor Rudy Giuliani said late on Wednesday.

He told a news conference that "thousands of people" were believed to be trapped in the still smouldering rubble, more 36 hours after the Center's twin towers were hit by two hijacked commercial airliners.

"I don't think beyond thousands we can be any more precise than that," Giuliani said.

Asked to confirm that his office had requested 6,000 body bags, he replied with apparent reluctance "I believe that is correct, yes."

Giuliani went on: "I have to say we don't have anywhere near all the information people are seeking

"We so far have recovered 82 bodies. We have participated in rescue efforts for five people. We have that information, but beyond that we are going to have keep searching and looking."

Mary Johnson, spokeswoman for the Greater New York Hospital Association, said about 2,300 people had been registered for first aid in hospitals in New York and adjacent New Jersey, but not many were admitted for more treatment.

Giuliani said workers removed 3,000 tonnes of debris Wednesday from the shattered landscape of south Manhattan.

"If we can do anything like that tomorrow, it will give us a head start in terms of cleaning," he said.

He cautioned that "this is a very dangerous rescue effort" and said firefighters and police officers were risking their own lives to save others.

"We've been able to recover people because they were fortunate enough to be in a particular place in which they were protected," he said.

Earlier, the mayor said about 300 firefighters and 70 police officers were missing since the World Trade Center's twin towers collapsed.

But he tried to allay the fears of New Yorkers that the catastrophe had released poisonous chemicals into the atmosphere.

"We are doing constant tests. The air quality is not dangerous -- the asbestos in the air -- so long as you're not in the epicentre of the recovery is not at dangerous levels," he said.

"The reason everybody is wearing masks -- which is what people are seeing on television, and they think there's a chemical agent or a biological agent -- is if you expose your eyes and you inhale the dust, it's going to irritate you and that could be dangerous," Giuliani said.

An unidentified New York Fire Department official told the same news conference that, contrary to earlier reports, another nearby building was not about to fall.

"Number One Liberty Plaza is not about to collapse," he said.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the outer walls of what had been the bottom seven floors of the World Trade Center's south tower caved in, sending up a new cloud of dirty white smoke and dust over the still-smoking ruins.

A police spokesman quoted by CBS television said the fire department had been expecting the collapse and pulled all rescue workers and firefighters back, and that no additional casualties were suffered.

At the time, local television stations said One Liberty Plaza had begun to collapse.

New York hospitals were braced to take in huge numbers of casualties and said they were "absolutely mobbed" by blood donors, but said relatively few people had so far been rescued from the disaster zone and treated for injury.

Johnson said there was a flood of blood donors at the city's hospitals and asked people to come back over the next couple of weeks.

Giuliani estimated it would take two to three weeks to clear the debris.