floating a plan to move it more than a mile away. it would rescue manhattan s st. vincent hospital also. king abdullah is one of the world s richest men and saving st. vincent s would cost about $300 million. jenna: a drinking water crisis in california of all places now affecting more than one million people. residents are waiting for answers and also waiting for action as you can imagine after being notifying their water is contaminated. anita vogel is in los angeles with the latest details on this story, which you think would happen in some third world country but not the case in the small town of seville. why are they afraid to drink the water? reporter: that is exactly what the residents are saying, jenna, this is california not a third world nation. keep in mind first of all the water infrastructure throughout the state of california is very
flight. you know, there was a collapse, obviously, not just of intelligence but of airport security as well that that many planes were hijacked almost simultaneously. although these days, as we know, tom, and learned from the twa tragedy, flight 800, that oftentimes some of these deces are absolutely it s impossible to see them in our kind of security x-ray machines that you have at typical airports. some are made of plastic. v ey can be very small and virtually undetectible, which is, of course, another major problem for airport security. we re going to go to bob bazell at st. vincent s hospital. obviously, we re veryer concern about the people who were in the world trade rcenter when these two planes crashed into them. bob, tell me about the scene at st. vincent s hospital. reporter: katie, the wounded are starting to come in in great regularity now, almost every 30 seconds an ambulance pulls up. some of them very badly burned.
apparently we re having some problems with kathleen, and i m sure it s as chaotic there as it was at st. vincent s where heard from bob bazell moments ago that there was a line with cardinal egan outside delivering last rites to some of the dead who were brought to the hospital. so we ll try to touch base with kathleen in just a moment. first we want to go to andrea mitchell once again in washington. reporter: i ve been told that the state department evacuation, katie, was precautionary only. there was car bomb, asadt least been reported or rumored. but in any case, that was precautionary only. there are still some officials there. they are now being redeployed to another location in virginia. the cia is still operational. intelligence officials are still meeting at langley. but those officials have also evacuated the nonessential employees. the current working theory, as you have been reporting and speculating, is that there is only one terror organization in this world that could c
manhattan because a lot of our major hospitals are well north of there, atlantics hill, columbia presbyterian, new york cornell, are the ambulances able to get through? have they cleared the traffic? we re in kind after a tomb her in the studios in midtown. reporter: tom, i had trouble hearing you just that time. there s a system in place here where they re triaging people in lower manhattan. they re putting sometimes tags around their neck, you see people wandering upwho have only slight injuries. others are very seriously injured. every hospital in the area is involved in a plan to take in some kind of patients. this one where i m at, stnc. vincent s, is one of the closest to the major trauma center, but every hospital is on alt. every hospital is taking in what is becoming now a sea of patients. nbc s robert bazell, thanks very much. let s go back to washington and nbc s tim russert who has a guest on the phone, porter goss, the head of the house intelligence committee. tim? r