New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani urged New Yorkers to evacuate lower Manhattan yesterday after two planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, causing both towers to collapse.
"I have a sense it's a horrendous number of lives lost," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said. "Right now we have to focus on saving as many lives as possible."
Giuliani said he had no idea of the death toll from the disaster and was organizing a command center in Greenwich Village in southwest Manhattan.
Giuliani also urged city residents to remain calm and stay at home following the attack and said anyone in lower Manhattan should "get out" of the way of emergency personnel.
"I would urge them to remain calm and stay at home," he said. "If you're in lower Manhattan get out. Walk slowly, but head north."
"If you're south of Canal Street, get out," said Giuliani, adding "The main thing is to stay calm, and pray."
"We had no warning of any kind" of the attacks, the mayor said, adding that he has been in contact with the White House.
The streets of lower Manhattan resembled a battle ground, as dirt-covered tourists and office workers staggered to safety, their faces displaying horror and shock.
Before the towers collapsed under the weight of the crashed planes and the subsequent explosions, people were seen jumping from lower windows of the 110-story buildings.
"There was a stampede up all the avenues on the West side," Reuters reporter Marjorie Olster said after the first of the two buildings collapsed more than hour after the first plane hit at about 8:45am.
"People were hysterical, saying `We're going to die.' A huge cloud of smoke and dust came up the avenue, looking like it was going to engulf everybody," Olster said.
The two 110-story towers, part of the largest commercial complex in the world, were reduced almost to rubble.
The city's emergency command center was located in one of the World Trade Center towers, as was the office of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridges and tunnels for the island of Manhattan and area airports.
Darren Cohen, an electrician from Long Island, said: "I heard the boom and saw flames. People were jumping out of the window." Debris from the building injured three people, who were lying on stretchers nearby, he said.
A person who answered the phone on the trading floor at interdealer-broker Cantor Fitzgerald, located near the top of the World Trade Center, said "We're fucking dying," when asked what was happening, and hung up. There was screaming and yelling in the background. A follow-up call was not answered.
Workers from Trade Center offices wandered lower Manhattan in a daze, many barely able to believe they were alive.
Donald Burns, 34, after being evacuated from a meeting on the 82nd floor of One World Trade Center, saw four severely burned people on the stairwell. "I tried to help them but they didn't want anyone to touch them. The fire had melted their skin. Their clothes were tattered," he said.
Boris Ozersky, 47, computer networks analyst, was on the 70th floor of one of the buildings when he felt something like an explosion rock it. He raced down 70 flights of stairs, and outside, in a mob in front of a nearby hotel. He was trying to calm a panicked women when the building suddenly collapsed.
"I just got blown somewhere, and then it was total darkness. We tried to get away, but I was blown to the ground. And I was trying to help this woman, but I couldn't find her in the darkness," Ozersky said.
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