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. (CONTINUING BREAKING NEWS)
UNIDENTIFIED
MALE: There have been frantic efforts to get people out of the
tower. Now, this was, again, this is tape, and you can see now
whether that was an explosion or exactly what happened that
caused that second tower to collapse. We cannot tell you.
CNN's Kelly Wallace is on the phone with us.
Kelly, where are you? What can you tell us?.
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, I am just
about four blocks north of the location of the World Trade
Center was standing. I was actually en route to the command
center. People really starring in disbelief, and then, as you
saw, of course, the pictures, watching that tower come down,
people just couldn't believe their eyes.
Police have
been pushing people immediately, people turning around and
started running ways -- blocks away from the site. There is
black smoke and this covering the air. You see people covering
their mouths with some handkerchiefs and their coats, and
basically, you know, it's an unbelievable scene.
Most
of the people are gone. The police are really pushing people
away. There are a lot of people, as I was make my way down,
here, Aaron, people just starring, getting on the cell phone,
crying, recounting stories where they (UNINTELLIGIBLE), you
know, basically had seen what happened earlier today, trying
to get in touch with loved ones, very concerned. And then, of
course, some people watching the other tower come down
earlier, and then a group of people, then, watching this other
tower coming down. A woman passing me covered in soot.
Basically, the sky is just black, you can't even see
down to lower Manhattan from the vantage point right now. The
police have cleared off all these streets, pushing people
away. Police telling us if you have to get out of here to get
out of here, pushing people away in garages. It's an
unbelievable scene -- Aaron.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can
see in this shot, our viewers can, a helicopter shot coming
across the harbor, the Statue of Liberty prominent in the
foreground and smoke and devastation and tragedy in the
background. A tragedy that continues to unfold and one that
still has many, many unanswered questions. We have a report
now that a car bomb, a car bomb has exploded at the State
Department. We are working to confirm that as well.
Howard Safer (ph) is a former New York City Police
commissioner, the top police job here in the city, and he
joins us for a few moments.
Mr. Safer, what do you
see?
SAFER (ph): I see...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE:
When you look at that what do you see?
SAFER: I see
something that is unimaginable. I see what is a police
commissioner's worst nightmare.
This is the situation
that, obviously, was well-planned, well- coordinated and, you
know, the loss of life that is take place down there is just
incredible and is going to go strain the emergency service of
this city to the hilt.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you --
are you hearing any specific information? Are you hearing
anything about the number of injuries, the number of
fatalities, the number of people in that building, those
buildings, are you getting any information from your
colleagues?
SAFER: Well, I know there are 50 thousand
people who work in the World Trade Center. I know that every
ambulance and fire company in the city and -- has been called
in and dispatched there. It's unimaginable, but the loss of
life is going to be huge.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are
as familiar with the city's plan or plans for these kinds of
incidences as anyone in the city. In all honesty, does the
plan cover the scope of what appears to have happened here?
SAFER: No. We have an office up in emergency
management. The plans for responding to a disaster are
probably as good as any in the world, but nobody ever would
contemplate that we would lose the two world trade centers and
in this manner.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell me
(UNINTELLIGIBLE) what is happening there, would you guess, in
the sense that, what are police doing? What is the first thing
that has to happen? Triage?
SAFER: The first thing is
triage. The first thing is to identify who can be treated, who
cannot be treated, to get those ambulances to hospitals, every
hospital's emergency room is open and I'm sure working right
now. And this is just a situation -- it's like a war zone, and
you have to logistically treat it like a war zone. You have to
have your front lines, you have to have your support, and you
have to have people who are constantly in there doing
something.
You know, I was also fire commissioner
before I was the police commissioner, and it's no longer an
initial, unfortanetly, but a high- rise fire like that is
almost impossible to fight. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At this point,
has -- would you say that every police officer, and there are
what, 40 thousand?
SAFER: There are 41 thousand police
officers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Forty-one thousand police
officers in the city have been called in?
SAFER: Every
one of them. I know every firefighters has been called in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And how many firefighters?
SAFER: There are 14 thousand firefighters, and I am
sure we'll be getting help with equipment from our adjoining
communities as well. I mean, this is a logistical exercise
that makes the first attack on the World Trade Center, you
know, relatively small.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because of
its scope?
SAFER: Because of its scope.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And it's placed in the building
itself, that it was high up in the building, does that
complicate things?
SAFER: It does. Once you get up in
the 10th floor in a fire -- it's almost impossible to fight a
high-rise fire above the 10th floor, except by sending
firefighters up there and using hose stands, and then you run
into the water pressure problems.
I was just thinking
about this not long after the Wworld Trade Center bombing, the
engineer who designed the World Trade Center told me that the
World Trade Center was designed to withstand a 707 direct
impact. Well, obviously, that wasn't the case.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It seems not.
SAFER: We are
getting reports and we are getting lots of reports and we want
to be careful to tell you when we have confirmed them and not,
but we have a report that a 747 is down in Pennsylvania, and
that remains unconfirmed at this point. And so we will check
on that.
I want to get back to the former commissioner
in a moment, but, again, to briefly recap: You have buildings
in Washington now evacuated, the White House, the Pentagon. We
have a report that there has been a collapse, a collapse of
part of the Pentagon itself; there was an explosion, you can
see the Pentagon on the right side of your screen, and that is
a live picture as well. And the left side of your screen, you
see the situation here in lower Manhattan, in New York, where
both of the World Trade Center towers have collapsed.
This morning, as people were coming to work -- all
airports in the country have been shut down. International
flights that were heading this way are being diverted to
Canada.
The White House has been evacuated. The
president was in Florida this morning, and he spoke briefly.
And said, in truth, the kinds of things and about the only
kinds of things that you can say in moments like this; that
the government will do everything it can to hunt down whoever
is responsible. This is, obviously, an extraordinary crisis
for the president, and the first crisis, major crisis like it,
that he has had to face -- compared to the plane that was --
the forced down in China, that seems small right now compared
to what's going on here in New York and in Washington. And the
president headed back on Air Force One from Florida to the
White House.
The White House itself has been
evacuated. We are trying, now, to figure out where the
relevant players in Washington are. Where the vice president
is, the national security team, where they are meeting. We are
working very hard right now to find out what, both the FBI,
what the CIA, what the Secret Service knows.
It is
chaotic now in two cities. You have major buildings that have
been evacuated. It's very difficult, obviously, to get phone
calls through.
As you look at the Pentagon, and I
suspect, we are also getting a report, as you look at these
pictures of the Pentagon, and in all honesty, suspect, you see
them a little more clearly than I do, but part of the building
appears to me, as a look at it, to have collapsed. That's the
Pentagon. And those pictures are live at 10:40 Eastern Time
this morning. Though, we have a report now of a fourth
explosion at the Trade Center.
And, Brian Palmer, our
CNN Correspondent, is as close as he can get to the area.
Brian, what can you tell us?
BRIAN PALMER, CNN
CORRESPONDENT: We are in fact as close says we can get. I'm
not going to give you an exact timeframe. But several moments
ago, we were standing in front of the United States
courthouse, when we saw the second World Trade Center
disappear from the skyline. It collapsed before our eyes, and
again, in a plume of ash and debris. People rushed north. We
had a New York City police department officer who witnessed
the first collapse. But he actually had to dash off to duty.
We have been watching people crying. Some people had relatives
in the buildings. They are not sure whether they are being --
whether they've been evacuated, removed from the buildings or
not.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: Was there -- Brian, did
it sound like there was an explosion before the second
collapse, or was the noise the collapse itself.
PALMER: Well, from our distance, what -- I was not
able to distinguish between an explosion and the collapse. We
were several hundred yards away. But we clearly saw the
building come down. I heard your report of a fourth explosion.
I can't that. But we heard some boom, and then the building
fold in on itself.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: We are
told, Brian -- hang on. We are told that the secretary of
defense is being evacuated from the Pentagon. The Pentagon
portion of the Pentagon has collapsed, after -- I am not
precisely sure on this, and I want to tell you when I am not
precisely sure, but apparently, a plane or pentagon hit part
of the pentagon itself, as you take a look at the pictures
there. I must say every time we hear a plane coming up
overhead, it gets a little nervous where we are.
Whatever is happening and whoever is responsible, we
have no way of knowing if it is played out yet, or if it is
just going on. So every time we hear a plane go by, we wonder
what situation is and where it is -- headed. We are told by
officials here. They believe that is a fighter jet. Federal
office buildings around the country, is that correct, all over
the country, have been closed, or just in Washington?
PALMER: Well, we are -- we were not allowed in to the
federal courthouse here, where CNN maintains a workspace. The
officers just said, we are now allowing you in. I think that's
a security precaution.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: Got
it. Stay with me a little bit. All federal office buildings
now, all federal office buildings in Washington, D.C. are
being evacuated as we speak to you now.
There are a
variety of reports, and it's important to try and put this in
some kind of order, but the most important things to tell if
you are just joined in is that what has all makings of an
extraordinarily well planned terrorist attack on both
Washington and New York has taken place this morning. The
Trade Centers here in New York, the two World Trade Center
towers, have collapsed, after being hit by a plane.
Maria Hinojosa joins us on the phone. She is in New
York, down near the building.
Maria, what can you tell
us?
MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'm
actually at St. Vincent's Hospital right now, where at about
45 minutes, 40 to 45 minutes after the first explosion, they
started seeing patients here. What I am hearing, and I have
not been in the ER yet, is that they have at least 1--
patients or more, that several of those people were dealing
with issues of smoke inhalation, many of them throwing up,
that there were several people who went directly to the
operating room, who were in very critical
condition.
Outside the hospital, people are coming in,
trying to help, to donate blood. Essentially, everybody here
at this hospital is in a state of shock. I mean, I walked into
the testing area, and the women who usually just draw blood
are extraordinarily moved and shocked. They're moving in and
out of the emergency room to try to help as many people as
possible.
Now outside, about a block away from here,
where you really had a bird eye's view of the two twin towers,
which are the landmarks of New York City. People stopped,
entire traffic has stopped. People have poured out of
buildings and were watching, in fact, as one of the towers
collapsed.
And then, you are really seeing lot of
trying to move north, away from any place downtown, near the
World Trade Center area. People are just walking. The subways
are stopped entirely, all around the area of the World Trade
Center. You can't get below 14th Street, and there it just
feels like a massive exodus of people walking north to get a
far away from the area as they possibly
can.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: Maria, I know Kitty
Pilgrim is with you as well. Tell us what you have been able
to report on.
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm
actually reporting from Kennedy Airport at the United
terminal, and I was here this morning flying out, when they
made an announcement about 20 of 10:00 that all flights were
grounded. People just thought it was the normal course of
airport business these days, and so not much reaction, and
then the news started to trickle through. It was not official
announcement, made over intercom.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN
ANCHOR: Kitty, let me interrupt for just a second. The
Associated Press is reporting that federal officials fear that
a second hijacked plane or another hijacked plane is headed
towards the Pentagon, and I'm looking for the time on this. We
will continue to check that out.
Kitty, I apologize
for interrupting. Why don't you continue?
Did we lose
her?
PILGRIM: Everyone didn't react, but then the news
came through. I have never seen Kennedy in this condition. I
have been here many times. People are in absolute shock. No
one is talking. They were just staring at each other with
their arms dropped to sides. A pin could drop in United
terminal. There were a couple hundred people there, and no one
was saying anything.
After about 20 minutes, people
rushed to phones. You cannot phone out. There is no real
access back to city. People are trying to get back. They have
unloaded the baggage from the planes. They have asked that
everyone pick up their bag and take it, and take it out of the
terminal, and take it home, and they are asking everyone to
please leave. People are just finding it difficult to leave.
They are not officially evacuating Kennedy Airport at this
point, at least at the United terminal. The attendants have
been asked to stay. Again, there are still several hundred
people standing around, not knowing what to do. No one is even
speaking.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: And again for
people -- Kitty, thank you -- not familiar with New York,
Kennedy is the major airport handling international flights
into the city. It is also an enormous complex of seven, or
eight or nine terminals.
PILGRIM: That is exactly
right. And in fact, the baggage has been unloaded into a
separate terminal from where I am, and they are asking people
to walk over, pick up their bags, and take them out. It is
virtually impossible to get from place to place at Kennedy,
and of course bridges and tunnels into Manhattan are virtually
inaccessible at this point. No one has anywhere to go.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: Kitty, thank you. We'll get
back to you. Chris Plante at the Pentagon has more. He joins
us on the phone.
Chris, what you can tell us?
CHRIS PLANTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, this is Chris
Plante at the Pentagon.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: Go
ahead.
PLANTE: Can you hear me?
UNIDENTIFIED
CNN ANCHOR: Yes, Chris, we hear you, go ahead.
PLANTE:
All right, the area to the west of the Pentagon has been
evacuated further back by law enforcement and military
officials as they anticipate a second aircraft arriving at the
Pentagon. It has been deemed to be threatening enough where I
saw at least one F-16 fighter jet in the air over the
Pentagon, headed to the west, where the plane was reportedly
coming in from. Again, they are saying here a second aircraft
is expected to arrive at the Pentagon sometime soon. They take
it seriously enough that they have scrambled at least one
fighter jet that I saw, probably either from D.C. Air National
Guard or the Maryland Air National Guard, both of which fly
F-16s.
The west front of the building of the Pentagon
along Route 27 has now partially collapsed. About a 60-foot
section of the building laterally has collapsed, the entire
five stories. The building has obviously -- the fire has is
scrambling inward in the building toward the courtyard, and
this wedge, as they call it, of the Pentagon, the westernmost
wedge, was just refurbished, and was in fact reinforced for
terrorist attack, and for just this sort of thing.
I
know that there were a significant number of injuries. I'm
unaware of any numbers on fatalities at this point. People
here who came from the building are suggest that surely there
were fatalities, but I can not confirm any. I have spoken to a
number of people that I know who've pulled people out of
rubble. There were severe injuries, a number of helicopters
here evacuating, injured people, and I'm told by one senior
military source, that the plane in the side of the building
has been tentatively identified as a Boeing 767, a full-sized
airliner, Boeing 767. But that at this point, they are waiting
for arrival of a possible second plane, which has been deemed
to be a threat, and as I said, fighter jets have been
scrambled to address that matter.
(CONTINUEING
BREAKING NEWS)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT,
PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM
LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
