Stunned New Yorkers Try to Resume Normal Activities - 2001-09-14

Smoke continues to fill the skies over the deep crater where the mighty World Trade Center Twin Towers stood. At the same time, New Yorkers tried to return to their daily routines in the United States' stunned, largest city.

It is a new way to describe "normal", but it is about as normal as New York will be for a while. With access open to most of the city, people returned to work amid the echo of sirens from ambulances and emergency vehicles. Huge tractor trailer trucks carrying heavy equipment and power generators traveled down the main avenues of the city.

Bomb scares - all called hoaxes by city officials - led to the evacuation of several major New York office buildings and transportation centers.

Rescue workers continued digging through the World Trade Center wreckage, racing against time to find survivors. The rescue efforts had to be temporarily halted on several occasions because of concern about weakened buildings nearby.

Several armories in the city have been converted to shelters for families looking for missing relatives. Among those searching for relatives was a New York City police officer. "I am missing my brother Damien," he said. "He is a male, 32 years. He works for Carr Funitures. He was on the 92nd floor at the time of the incident. We have not heard from him for two days."

Survivors of the attack continue to tell horrifying tales of the attack. From his hospital bed, maintenance engineer Arthur del Bianco describes what he experienced in the minutes following the attack of the two airplanes on the World Trade Center. "We got outside the Building Four on Church Street," he said. "Now we saw all this debris coming down from above and the two planes where they crashed in the building. You could see them. The flames and the smoke. People jumping out the windows, just bodies flying out the windows. We were horrified."

President George Bush, scheduled to visit the site of the attack Friday, pledged $20 billion to help New York.

The stock Market will reopen Monday after four consecutive days of being closed.

Federal enforcement officials closed area airports eight hours after they opened on the limited basis. City officials say one person was arrested and several others were detained.