Posted on 09/11/2001 6:45:17 PM PDT by kattracks
200 New York City firefighters are missing and presumed dead tonight along with 78 city police, who were apparently trapped as the two gigantic World Trade Center Towers collapsed in the world's worst terrorist attack ever.
Also presumed dead: three of the city fire department's top brass, one senior NYPD official and several top officials with the Port Authority, which ran the World Trade Center.
Thousands of bodies remained buried Tuesday night in rubble that in some areas reaches five stories high. By 10 p.m., three thousand known casualities had been evacuated to area hospitals and rescue centers.
Estmates of civillian casualties are still sketchy. But some fear the Twin Tower death toll may be America's highest since Nov. 1862, when 22,000 Union and Confederate soldiers perished in a single day's battle at Antietam -- the bloodiest day in U.S. history.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
There were reports this morning that firemen were rushing in as the buildings were being evacuated, no one could have expected them to fall as they did. (Normally, don't they have to assess and/or secure the buildings before they go in?)
Entire fire companies are "missing", though there are scattered reports that some fire/police are alive in the rubble at the moment.
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