NEW YORK (AP) - In one indication of the potential death toll, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was asked about a report that the city has requested 6,000 body bags from federal officials. ``Yes, I believe that's correct,'' said the mayor.In another, 2,500 people visited a grief counseling center handling questions about missing family members Wednesday.
The last few floors that remained of the trade center's south tower collapsed Wednesday afternoon in yet another cloud of thick smoke. No injuries were reported, but rescuers were evacuated from part of the area where the 1,350-foot titans stood.
Police and fire officials said there were problems with other ``mini-collapses'' among some badly damaged buildings nearby, and when the towers were destroyed, the Marriott World Trade Center hotel fell with them.
The search and rescue mission continued despite the problems.
The devastation turned the concrete canyons of lower Manhattan into a dust-covered ruin of girders and boulders of broken concrete. A Brooks Brothers clothing store became a morgue, where workers brought any body parts they could find.
The workers' grim task was interrupted by brief epiphanies of life, when a fortunate victim was pulled alive from the wreckage of the steel-and-glass buildings. In all, five victims, three of them police officers, have been pulled from the wreckage alive.
Progress for rescuers in New York was slow. Cranes and heavy machinery were used, but gingerly, for fear of dislodging wreckage and harming any survivors. Searchers with picks and axes worked slowly, too - sometimes when they opened pockets in the debris, fires flared. (Read photo caption below)
Companies that leased space in the trade center began realizing the awful consequences of the violence. Thirty-eight people from Fred Alger Management Inc. were missing, including the company's president, David Alger.
Giuliani said the best estimate is that a ``a few thousand'' victims would be left in each building, potentially including 250 missing firefighters and police officers. Among the missing was John O'Neill, head of security for the trade center and a former FBI expert on terrorism.
There were 82 confirmed fatalities - a number that was sure to grow. Another 1,700 injuries were reported.
The four hijacked planes carried 266 people, none of whom survived. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said an estimate that as many as 800 people were killed at the Pentagon may be far too high.
Authorities had ``specific credible information'' that both Air Force One and the White House were targets, and that ``the plane that hit the Pentagon may have been headed for the White House,'' said Sean McCormack, spokesman for President Bush's National Security Council.
There also was speculation that, in the case of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, the hijackers intended to jet elsewhere but were thwarted by passengers. One of them, Thomas Burnett, a 38-year-old business executive, told his wife by cell phone ``a group of us are going to do something'' before the crash.
One volunteer, Peter Coppola, said he had found four dead bodies in his 24 hours of searching. ``The air down there is totally toxic,'' he said.
People still clung desperately to the hope that their missing friends and family members were somehow alive.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A line of front loaders and trucks fill New York's West street, Wednesday Sept. 12, 2001, enroute to the site of the World Trade Center. Rescue workers dug for bodies in mountains of rubble as the city struggled to recover from the airborne attack on the World Trade Center Tuesday that shut down the nation's financial capital and created a new skyline etched in terror. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
- Sep 12 7:26 PM ET