but this country, the strongest country in the world, has been the target of a major coordinated terrorist attack. and the end is not over yet. even if it s confined to just these three targets, the ripple effect goes on. all air traffic has been shut down. there will be no financial markets in place today. business has been stopped across the country. and of course who knows the human toll that will be the result of this action. matt and i matt actually just pointed out to me on any given day 50,000 people tom, work at the world trade center. and at 8:45 in the morning if they re not in the building they re around the building. that s a beehive of activity down there. there is no more active area in terms of pedestrian traffic. if you consider that this plane hit at midstructure and it would have probably taken out the electrical in the building where elevators wouldn t work and people struggling to get some way out of that tower and it takes a long time to come
it s impossible to say how many casualties there may be. but there have been a large number of people sighted being removed on stretchers. as one survivor said the florida just buckled up under him and the roof caved in on him. mik, thank you very much. we want to move a couple of miles away from you to the white house where bob kerr is standing by. bob, we understand that building has been evacuated? reporter: matt, that is true. it is utterly surreal. as soon as word came of the pentagon incident we were rather forcefully removed from the white house. the scene was one of administrators, cooks, whatever running at fairly high speed all the way out of the building through the top gates. then we huddled for a while in lafayette park across the street and we ve been moved now from there a block or so away.
down over 100 stories. to think about the possible loss of life that just occurred by the collapse of that southeastern tower is just amazing. minna saw the collapse records yes, high matt. tell me what you saw. reporter: on the corner of dwayne and west broadway walking down towards the twin towers and it just collapsed. it looked like it looked sort of like the building just demolished. smoke, clouds clouds of smoke everywhere. people running towards me. i was going towards the twin towers. people going away from the towers. it was just people running, like i ve never seen a scene like it. from where you were minna, did you see many of the injured being treated? is there any indication the type of perimeter that the ems people are dolingealing with?
but this very interesting information, katie, matt and tom, from the fbi. they had been operating a massive exercise from their hostage rescue unit. all of their top teams, about 50 personnel, helicopters, equipment, were in monterey california, for the last two days scheduled to fly back today commercially. so all of those people are out of place. it s fair to say according to sources that we ve talked to here at nbc that the fbi rescue operations and other fbi operations are really in chaos right now because they can t reach their officials in new york. all of their phone lines are down. now you ve got all of their special experts on this stuck in monterey california trying to get a military flight back because there are no longer commercial flights. so they are serious out of pocket and there is a real breakdown of the fbi anti-terror coordination team, which is of course, the principal team that would lead any effort and was so effective under jim calstrom in new york city during t
thank goodness a helicopter just flew by. i m nervous here hearing aircraft go past. they have evacuated that portion of the building. they have sirens that go off alerting you to the fact that it s time to get out. i haven t heard those yet. just judging boy the pictures it s clear that part of the building that is not damaged has been evacuated. in the hall way it was panned mope yum. people were rushing for their offices. you are in the office? i m at the office but the opposite side of where this crash occurred. see if you can gather more information and please be careful. we will go to matt. thank you very much. i am joined by tom brocaw to recap what has been going on in a few moments. we top the go to nbc s or