life. we saw but the world trade center in flames, big gaping hole all the way in the top of it. we could see people jumping from the top of the building. at midday, the financial district of lower manhattan looks like a war zone, with no idea if another attack is imminent, hundreds of companies throughout new york sent their workers home, bridges and tunnels across the hudson river clothes, mass transit shut down. there are over thousand rescue workers, probably about 2000 deployed, trying to get into the building, trying to find people trying to search for people, the governor and i spoke a couple of hours ago, the governor has deployed the national guard to relieve meant, because people are going to need reinforcement pretty soon. but right now they don t want to leave because they are searching, they are searching for innocent citizens and they re searching for some of their brothers and sisters. one rescuers finally got inside the trade towers, the damage left many of them
started, there was gray smoke, and i thought it was confetti flowing all over the place. fire and death, confusion below as some 10,000 people screened out of the building. that was a lady that had a bit gash in her head. witnesses reported a horrifying scene. desperate people jumping from the burning skyscrapers. bloody clothing and body parts scattered on the streets below. as emergency crews rushed to the southern tip of manhattan, the median thought, could it really be happening again? step back okay. in 1993, the same building was hit by a truck bomb, islamic militants hoping to topple the one tower into the other. six people died in that attack, and 1500 were injured. full within the first minutes today, it was clear that the toll this time would be much higher. then, at 9:03, less than 20 minutes after the first strike,
destroyed by this. one of our producers in his own words. he was there in the middle of it. christian martin is a producer for dateline. he managed to buy a camera from a taurus, and then almost lost his life as he was trying to record what was going on down there. we want to tell you that momentarily we do expect to hear from the attorney general of the united states, john ashcroft. who does have supervisory responsibility for the fbi. he s our chief law enforcement officer. and also from the secretary of health and human services, tommy thompson, the former governor of wisconsin. he will be dealing with a lot of the relief that is going on. behind me you can see the dust is now be able to being settled over the city of new york. and the billowing smoke is still emanating from the lower part of manhattan. the sight of what was wants to towers. each 110 stories high. 20,000 people we believe are in
engineering professor thinks the energy from those large planes would be equivalent to a five or six richter skill earthquake. as the airplanes came in and energy was absorbed, some of that core may have been damaged tremendously. and maybe this was part and course of this implosion. the way the towers collapsed seen similar to pictures we ve become accustomed to watching. as all buildings like the kingdom in seattle are taking their with explosives. this control demolition company says once a building starts falling, it releases a law stored energy. we use explosives as a catalyst release that potential energy. it converts into kinetic energy. it gets the building moving nbc s roger o neil tonight on the stunning destruction of the twin towers of the world trade center here in manhattan as a result of the terrorist attack. all hour long we ve been trying to bring raheem alice and her
as soon as they get organized, will be sending more and more people in. and why you downturn hospital has the only emergency room in the manhattan where the first victims from the blast were brought here. the cafeteria has been turned into a triage area. hospital officials say there are victims wall-to-wall. eight years ago this, hospital took in the first victims from the world trade center bombing. officials say they re trying to plan more disasters. two weeks ago, they went through an emergency drill. but no one ever imagined they d be tested so soon. raheema ellis, nbc news, indoor manhattan. manhattan. nbc s raheema eliss in the middle of it all. we want to remind you will have continuing coverage of this. the president of the united states will have his speech at 8 pm eastern tonight. it is now been hours since the