NY Mayor Says Death Toll 'More Than We Can Bear'

Reuters ^ | 9/11/01

[kattracks]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (news - web sites) on Tuesday declared the lower part of Manhattan off limits to civilians until at least Thursday after an attack destroyed both towers of the World Trade Center and caused what he called a ``horrendous number of lives lost.''

``We don't have a count yet (on fatalities) and we really don't want to hazard a guess until some time later,'' Giuliani told a news conference. ``When we get the final number, it will be more than we can bear,'' he said.

He added the area of Lower Manhattan would be closed to civilians to allow rescue workers to concentrate on finding victims in the mountains of rubble from the landmark 110-story towers, in which about 40,000 people work.

He said that the city ``was not officially closed'' but he advised the hundreds of thousands of people who work in Manhattan to stay home on Wednesday. He also cautioned merchants that police would be on the lookout for price gouging.

The mayor asked for prayers for the people who were killed and hope for those buried alive. ``We have not given up hope we will find people alive,'' he said.

Giuliani said there was no threat or warning of the attack on the symbols of financial power.

``There were people jumping out of the World Trade Center. It was a horrible, horrible situation,'' the mayor said.

In the worst terror attack on the U.S. mainland in modern history, two hijacked planes hit New York's twin towers and a third plane punched into the Pentagon (news - web sites), across the Potomac river from Washington.

Giuliani said there were six confirmed dead and 1,100 emergency room visits at New York's 170 hospitals so far. He said 200 of them were critically wounded. He added 2,000 people, described as ``walking wounded,'' were evacuated by ferry across the Hudson River to New Jersey.

``We will strive now very hard to save as many people as possible and to send a message the City of New York and the United States of America is much stronger than any group of barbaric terrorists,'' he said.

He said he wanted to focus on rescue operations first and then find out the magnitude of the situation.

[The Electrician]

In the totally absurd department: I was in Manhattan this morning, luckily several miles north of the WTC, and as I walked up Park Avenue in the mid-twenties towards my office, moving slowly through the crowds of dazed and disbelieving people, I passed one black woman who was loudly declaring to everybody within earshot that this event was clearly a plot to ensure that Mark Green (who has received strong support from former NYC police commissioner Bratton) would win the Democrat primary and be elected as the next mayor, with the objective of keeping Fernando Ferrar (is that his proper name? he's the one who "won" Al Sharpton's endorsement) from becoming mayor... I would not have believed it if I hadn't heard it with my own ears... Talk about deranged conspiracy theories...

[Octar]

It's such a shame that so many black people allow themselves to become brainwashed into believing this foolishness. Most white people don't hate blakcks and most blacks don't hate whites. The color thing serves only the Sharpton, jackson and Faarahkon (sp) phoneys. Bums.