'Few Thousand' Feared Dead

BOSTON—One day after the most deadly terrorist attack ever on the United States brought destruction to the country’s largest city and its capital, a stunned nation began the slow search for answers.

Chaos continued into the night, with further revelations of horror emerging from Tuesday’s hijacking and crash of four passenger jets that killed and injured thousands.

“The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war,” President George W. Bush said yesterday morning. “Freedom and democracy are under attack.”

In New York City, rescuers faced a daunting task, hoping to find any survivors still trapped within the ash-coated wreckage. By nightfall, 82 bodies had been recovered. The missing included more than 350 firefighters, 40 police officers and 30 port authority officers who had arrived at the scene immediately following Tuesday’s attack.

Only a handful of survivors had been rescued from the building’s remains.

“The best estimate we can make is that there were a few thousand people left in each building [when they collapsed],” said New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani at a press conference yesterday morning. “We are doing everything we can to recover other people.”

Giuliani said he ordered 6,000 body bags from federal officals for the recovery effort.

Much of New York remained paralyzed, with schools and office buildings closed, streets and sidewalks virtually empty. For the second day, the New York Stock Exchange did not open its doors, and it is not expected to do so again until next Monday.

Despite efforts to stabilize the area, danger still looms over the city. Yesterday evening, the 54-story home of Nasdaq’s new headquarters located across the street from the World Trade Center partially collapsed, with fears that other buildings nearby may also do the same. For a brief period, the Empire State Building—now the tallest building in New York City—as well as Penn Station, were evacuated as a precautionary measure.

The situation in Washington, D.C. was equally grim as the Pentagon resumed operations in a still-smoldering building.

The Arlington County Fire Department originally estimated that as many as 800 people may have died in the attack on the Pentagon, with virtually no hope of finding survivors. But now some goverment officials said the death toll could end up being significantly lower, ranging closer to 150 fatalities.

While operations in Washington were functioning yesterday, Bush cautioned that the city was nowhere near recovery, still operating on a “heightened security alert.”

“The federal government and all our agencies are conducting business, but it is not business as usual,” President Bush said yesterday morning. “America is going forward, and as we do so, we must remain keenly aware of the threats to our country.”

Airport Regulations Tightened

As Washington and New York began the lengthy recovery process, the rest of the nation slowly moved towards normalcy. Planes diverted and grounded during Tuesday’s emergency measures were permitted to finish their connecting paths yesterday, although all other civilian air traffic was prohibited.

In response to Tuesday’s attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced a dozen measures aimed to significantly beef up airport security and safety. The new security measures, described by Massport and FBI authorities at a press conference yesterday morning in Boston, include increasing the frequency of random ID checks, as well as heightening the presence of security personnel in airports.

Additionally, the FAA will require all airports to reduce the number of access points to the airport, discontinue curbside check-in, as well as remove unauthorized vehicles within 300 feet of all terminals. The guidelines will also prohibit the sale or use of knives, even in restaurants, beyond airport security checkpoints.

Boston’s Logan International Airport—the departure site for two of Tuesday’s hijacked planes—and airports nationwide will have to comply with these new safety requirements before reopening.

But while Logan will work to meet the new FAA guidelines before reopening, Massport officials said in a press release yesterday that they have already implemented many of the new regulations—a fact that raises doubts about the effectiveness of the changes. A state police bomb detection unit has been stationed at Logan for 30 years and Massport has locked down more than 20 potential access points since 1998.

Massport is currently working to develop a schedule for increasing security inspections in passenger terminals and has plans to offer security training for airport employees.

At a press conference at the State House at 4:30 yesterday afternoon, acting Mass. Gov. Jane Swift said that Massport will try to move beyond the new FAA regulations.

“We are fully ready to assign state troopers to every security checkpoint,” Swift said.

She emphasized that there are no immediate plans for Boston’s airport to reopen.

“Everyone anticipates it might take some time for Logan to comply with all these directives,” Swift said. “Logan will not open until we’re comfortable we’re in full compliance.”

Swift urged passengers to greet the stringent new security requirements with “patience and cooperation.”

“There will be a heightened police presence,” she said. “Everyone understands why we need to take those precautions...We are all going to have to accept some changes.”

—The Associated Press contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Imtiyaz H. Delawala can be reached at delawala@fas.harvard.edu. Staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.