by TERENCE NEILAN, The New York Times
Rescuers pulled seven people from the rubble of the devastated World Trade Center today as the search continued for survivors and victims of Tuesday’s airborne attacks.
The seven, a company of six firefighters and a Port Authority police officer, apparently fell into a small pocket of air after the towers collapsed, officials said. They were taken to a hospital for treatment.
An officer with the Nassau County emergency services who was involved in the rescue said in a television interview that one of those rescued “was in very good condition.” He added that a doctor kept all the firefighters in “great shape all through the night, using an I.V. and that sort of thing.”
“There were pipes and concrete all around them,” he said, adding that the space created by the rubble allowed them to survive. He estimated that the survivors had been trapped from five to six hours.
A fellow firefighter who was at the scene said the seven had apparently “fallen into a void that saved their lives.”
The seven were freed only hours after the rescue of two other survivors, both of them Port Authority police officers, late Tuesday night.
In Israel, a Foreign Ministry official said today that an Israeli businessman trapped in the rubble had used a cell phone to telephone a relative in Israel for help.
The official gave no details about the man, but he said at least five Israelis worked for companies at the World Trade Center, and at least two Israelis were among the passengers on the four airliners that were hijacked on Tuesday.
At a news conference this morning, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said the known death toll had risen to 45 but that estimates of those killed were still in the thousands.
“There were a few thousand left in each building and our rescue work is concentrated on those kind of numbers,” he said. He offered no comment on a report that people could still be heard in the rubble, but he added that there may be at least one other person trapped inside.
“We are doing everything we can to recover other people,” he added, going on to say that making sure that food supplies were able to be delivered to the city was now a priority. It was all part of the effort to get the city back to normal as soon as possible, he said.
The mayor also held up pictures of the flight recorders, or black boxes, that were aboard the two planes that crashed into the twin towers. He said copies would be circulated to all rescue and emergency workers, with the hope that the boxes could be recovered and the information they are thought to contain put to use.
Gov. George E. Pataki, who was at the news conference with the mayor, said, “We will get through this because New Yorkers come together in times of crisis.”
“We will not be intimidated,” he said. “We will not lose our freedom.”
In earlier comments, Mayor Giuliani said about 1,700 people from the disaster had been treated at local hospitals. He noted that there were 202 firefighters and 57 police officers still missing, along with an untold number of civilians.
“I don’t think we will know until the relief and rescue efforts take place over the next three or four days,” he said. “We’re ready for casualties in the thousands.”
But Mr. Giuliani also sounded a note of optimism.
“I’m very hopeful that they’re going to find more people and that they’re going to rescue more people,” he said. “The World Trade Center is one of the most visible symbols of New York but the real symbol of New York is the spirit of its people.”
Mr. Giuliani said between 1,000 and 2,000 rescue workers were involved in the search for survivors.
Early today investment banks and brokerages, including Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Cantor Fitzgerald, said they were still trying to account for their New York-based employees at the trade center. Many firms said they could not confirm whether their employees had been evacuated before the towers collapsed.
Manhattan hospitals were on alert to receive both victims and survivors. Spokesmen at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village said the medical staff had been “in a high state of preparedness during the night.”
They said in news conferences today that 361 people had been treated at its emergency room and that 90 had been admitted, with 61 of them in critical condition. Five of those had admitted had died, the spokesmen said.
They issued a renewed call for blood donations, either through the Red Cross or the New York Blood Center. Some 800 people went to the hospital to give blood. “All of New York is in need of blood,” a spokesman said.
The hospital also praised the local community for what it called a “truly unbelievable outpouring of help,” but it said there was no further need for donations of clothes.
In his comments this morning, Governor Pataki said Help in searching for victims and other possible survivors was coming from a wide area, including Rockland and Westchester counties and Long Island.
Hundreds of military, police and medical personnel were also heading to New York City today from upstate.
Rural/Metro Medical Services was sending 90 paramedics and emergency medical technicians and 23 ambulances, including 20 people from Buffalo.
Into the night on Tuesday ferries were carting bodies across the Hudson River,a Jersey City spokesman, Stan Eason, told The Associated Press. Three cab companies ripped out seats from vans to help carry the dead to the Military Ocean Terminal in Bayonne, N.J.
Overnight at least one body was pulled from the rubble and taken to a Brooks Brothers store across the street from the trade center. Inside, the men’s shirt department had been converted into a makeshift morgue, Outside, etched in the ash from the collapse of the twin towers, were the words “God bless America, land that we love.”