Use of this site indicates your agreement to the Terms of Service (updated 08/09/2001).

The Search
Rescuers grow frustrated as search continues


By Larry Neumeister / Associated Press

Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

   NEW YORK -- With each passing, fruitless hour, the men and women who combed the wreckage of the World Trade Center grew more frustrated Sunday, their hopes of finding survivors dashed at every turn.
   Ed Kester, a firefighter from Engine Co. 313 in Queens, said when searchers found personal items among the rubble, their hearts quickened with the possibility that a living person might be nearby.
   "It gives a hint -- like eyeglasses, pocketbooks, Palm Pilots," Kester said, as he peeled off his suit a few blocks from the site at the end of an eight-hour shift. "If we find stuff, we bring dogs in to sniff around. It was a letdown. The dogs didn't pick up on anyone."
   The city released a partial list of victims Saturday, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said 159 people had been confirmed dead, 99 of whom had been identified. Eighteen city firefighters were among the confirmed dead, including two top officials. The total number of missing was raised by more than 200, to 4,972.
   "It was very somber," said Jim Kasey, 35, a credit card fraud investigator from Yardley, Pa., who picked through debris by hand, filling buckets that were passed along a line of as many as 100 volunteers.
   Kasey, who used to be a volunteer emergency medical technician, said he longed to hug his two children when he first laid eyes on the pile of Trade Center carnage.
   "I came because it's the right thing to do, 'cause if your family was in here, you'd want me, and people like me, here too."
   Giuliani said the grief-laden city was pushing ahead plans to reopen much of downtown Manhattan on Monday with a new service, a ferry carrying passengers between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
   "This could be the most jarring event in American history ... so there's every reason to understand why people are going to be very traumatized or very upset by it but the best way to deal with it is to try to get back to normal," he said.
   It was easy to see why rescuers were numb. Among the grisly finds at the site were a pair of hands, bound together, found on a rooftop. Another was the torso of a Port Authority police officer, identified by the radio still hanging from his belt.
   Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said the tally of the missing was increased because more reports had been received, both from outside the city -- 1,200 reports were filed with police departments in the region -- and by family members reporting to a Manhattan crisis center.
   The increase virtually guaranteed that the death toll in the coordinated terrorist attacks on New York and Washington will exceed 5,000. Among the missing were two federal agents, one with the FBI the other with the Secret Service.
   The Fire Department, in the worst tragedy since its first engine companies were formed in 1865, lost about 300 members in the Trade Center carnage and planned to announce 168 promotions at a ceremony Sunday. Chief of Operations Daniel A. Nigro was to be promoted to Chief of Department, and Assistant Chief Salvatore J. Cassano was to be promoted to Chief of Operations.
   Laid to rest Saturday were Chief of Department Peter Ganci, and William Feehan, the department's first deputy commissioner.