A city torn apart

NEW YORK -- As night fell, the city moved past the nightmarish scenes of people on fire jumping from buildings and braced itself for more pain: picking through the rubble for the dead and the injured.\nCrews began heading into ground zero of the terrorist attack to search for survivors and recover bodies. The downtown area was cordoned off and a huge rescue effort was under way. Gov. George Pataki mobilized the National Guard to help, and hundreds of volunteers and medical workers converged on triage centers, offering services and blood.\nOne man caught under the rubble used his cell phone to reach family in Pennsylvania with a plea for help.\n"She received a call from him saying he was still trapped under the World Trade Center. He gave specific directions and said he was there along with two New York City sergeants," said Brian Jones, 911 coordinator in Allgeheny County. He would not give their names, but said the message was passed to New York authorities.\nParamedics waiting to be sent into the rubble were told that "once the smoke clears, it's going to be massive bodies," according to Brian Stark, an ex-Navy paramedic who volunteered to help. He said the paramedics had been told that "hundreds of police and firefighters are missing" from the ranks of those sent in to respond to the initial crash.\n"I hope we get patients," said medical student Eddie Campbell, who rushed to help at one of the centers.\n"But they're not coming out. They're in there," he said, pointing down the street to where the World Trade Center once stood.\nEmergency Medical Service worker Louis Garcia said initial reports indicated that bodies were buried beneath the two feet of soot on streets around the twin towers. Garcia, a 15-year veteran, said bodies "are all over the place."\nEight hours after the catastrophe began, hundreds of firefighters sat on the West Side Highway or leaned against their rigs, waiting for orders to go into the leveled skyscrapers and search for what they feared would be hundreds of bodies -- including many colleagues.