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Five firefighters rescued from Trade Center rubble
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Five firefighters, who had been missing since Tuesday's collapse of the World Trade Center Towers were found alive Thursday. The firefighters were found in an SUV that had been buried in the rubble. Earlier, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Thursday that 4,763 people were listed as missing after the attacks. He said that includes the passengers and crew of the two airliners, unaccounted-for employees of the companies in the building, rescuers and people reported missing by friends or family members. Giuliani said 94 bodies had been recovered and 46 of those had been identified. He said 70 body parts had also been recovered. Meanwhile, Pentagon officials said the death toll there had reached an estimated 190, including an Army three-star general. The figure included the 64 passengers and crewmembers on the plane. New York City Medical Examiner's office sought on Thursday to increase its stock of body bags to nearly 11,000. The city had 900 bags in stock ; 10,000 more were ordered. Seven people were pulled from the rubble Wednesday. A ballroom in a nearby building, set up to receive survivors, was empty Wednesday afternoon. Hundreds of buildings are damaged in the area around the World Trade Center complex, some of them with huge holes that put them at risk of collapsing themselves. The damaged buildings, along with some still-standing beams of the destroyed World Trade Center towers that could fall at any time, forced rescue workers to go slowly in their desperate search for more survivors. On the 75-foot-high wreckage of those twin towers -- still smoking in places from smoldering fires -- more than 1,500 workers climb and dig, hoping to find more survivors. Above them loom 12 buildings with huge holes in them, threatening to collapse. One 20-story building seems as if it would tumble in a heavy wind. As the rescue workers make their way through the rubble, they carry dishes. It is in those dishes they put the body parts they find. Another room -- part of a damaged Brooks Brothers store next to the World Trade Center wreckage -- is set up as a morgue. It has some bodies in it, but mostly it has only body parts. The scene in Lower Manhattan is much worse than it appears from outside the area. For more than 10 blocks in every direction from the World Trade Center complex, debris clogs the streets, cars are overturned, and buildings are heavily damaged from the debris that came raining down when the center's towers fell. A nine-story building, 5 World Trade Center, and the Millennium Hilton hotel were in danger of collapsing, fire officials said. Giuliani said two people trapped in the WTC basement made cell phone calls to their relatives to give them their locations, and said others were down there with them. "We're going to focus our efforts on recovering as many people as we can and on removing debris, which will take at least two or three weeks," said Giuliani at a Wednesday news conference. Eighteen teams of rescue workers were using listening devices and dogs to locate survivors and bodies, the police commissioner said at a news conference Wednesday. New York Fire Chief Pete Ganci, who spent more than 30 years with the New York Fire Department, and First Deputy Commissioner of the Fire Department William Feehan are among those who perished. The Greater New York Hospital Association -- an organization of some 200 hospitals in the New York metro area -- said emergency rooms treated more than 1,500 people after Tuesday's attack. Knife-wielding hijackers took over four planes Tuesday, crashing two of them into the 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center. Another hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon; a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. A total of 266 people aboard those airplanes were killed. Pentagon officials said they expected the number of fatalities there to be somewhere between 100 and 200, including the people on board the plane. Dover Air Force Base in Delaware was preparing to receive the victims' bodies. Arlington County emergency officials said they were assuming they would find no more survivors in the wreckage. Washington Hospital Center told the AP it is treating 15 people from the attack. Seven of those are in critical condition. Walter Reed Army Hospital has two patients, according to the AP. About 24,000 workers returned to work at the Pentagon Thursday. Half of the building remains closed because of structural and smoke damage, and many workers will have to double up in offices. |
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