THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS
FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH
TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE
UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We have on the
phone with us New York's mayor, Rudy Giuliani.
Mr.
Mayor, give us your best piece of information, as the
situation right now.
RUDY GIULIANI, MAYOR, NEW YORK
CITY: The situation right now is a massive rescue effort
that's going right now. We are trying to evacuate thousands
and thousands of people. We have as many of our police and
fire personnel, as we have down in the southern part of
Manhattan evacuating people, trying to save as many lives as
possible.
We've been in communication with Governor
Pataki, who's gotten the national guard ready, and they're
going to come in and relieve us a little bit later in the day.
And we have spoken to the White House, and the urban search
and rescue teams will come here also to assist us.
But
right now, the New York City police and fire, EMS, that are
down there trying to evacuate as many people as we possibly
can. And we have asked everyone to leave lower Manhattan if
they can, on their own, so that it relieves our efforts. This
will be going on all day.
It's a horrible, horrible
tragedy.
BROW: It is that. Mr. Mayor, can you tell me,
is it is a -- are people panicking down
there?
GIULIANI: No, people -- I was there right under
-- right in a building that got hit by the debris when the
first tower collapsed. So I had to evacuate with people. We
were trapped in the building for a while. And we were finally
able to get out. And we all walked to -- we all walked north.
And people, everything that I have observed, even
though it was hundreds, maybe in some cases, thousands of
people that were walking on the streets. They were orderly,
they were calm. They handled themselves really -- probably
better than anybody had any right to expect.
BROWN:
And Mr. Mayor, we were told one of the problems, and lord
knows there are hundreds of problems, one of the problems was
that a number -- a large number of police, fire, EMS personnel
have also been injured in this. Can you shed any light that?
GIULIANI: I -- I don't even want to contemplate what the
number will be. But when the building collapsed, we had a lot
of our police officers and firefighters in the building. And I
am -- and I know many of them, because I saw some of them go,
because I was there, and I am praying for them. I just hope
they are able to get out.
BROWN: I think we all --
GIULIANI: The losses to our police department and fire
department...
BROWN: Sir, do...
GIULIANI: ...
are going to be severe.
BROWN: Do you believe that --
was there another set of explosions that caused the buildings
to collapse, or was it the structural damage caused by the
planes?
GIULIANI: I don't know. I saw -- I saw the
first collapse and heard the second because I was in a
building when the second took place. I think that it was
structural, but I can't be sure.
BROWN: Can you tell
us how many hospitals in the city, and perhaps outside of the
city, too. All of them.
GIULIANI: Right now, at last
count, we were utilizing over 50. I think it will be over 100
by the -- and that was as of a half hour ago. Utilizing all of
the hospitals in New York City, we're utilizing the hospitals
in Westchester and Rockland, Nassau County, northern New
Jersey.
The main thing we have to urge people to do is
to be calm, and evacuate lower Manhattan. And as far as the
rest of the city is concerned, just to go about their lives
as, you know, as best as possible.
This is a -- I
never thought I would see something like this happen. I got
there after the first plane hit and before the second. And
watching people jump from the top of the World Trade Center,
is -- unbelievable sight.
BROWN: Mr. Mayor, my
colleague Jeff Greenfield is with us also.
Jeff?
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Mr.
Mayor, in terms of -- you've already said that you want lower
Manhattan evacuated, you want everybody else to go about their
business.
Are there specific instructions that you
want to communicate right now to police, fire, everybody
else?
GIULIANI: Police and fire are there, and they're
there in large numbers. They are first of all trying to get
into the rubble and the debris to save as many people as
possible. We also have thousands of police officers in lower
Manhattan. And what we want people to do is to leave lower
Manhattan, if they can, on their own, to
walk...
GREENFIELD: Sorry.
GIULIANI: I just
talked to Dick Grasso who runs the stock exchange, and we have
a lot of people there, we have 3,000 people there. We're going
to walk them out. We're walking them east and then north,
which is essentially the way I walked out. I walked -- I was
right below the World Trade Center when it collapsed, and then
we walked up to Greenwich Village.
People should walk
out of lower Manhattan. Get above Canal Street, for safety
reasons, but for a second reason. We need people out of there
so we can get thousands of ambulances in and out over the
course of the next couple of hours. The fewer people we have
there, the more lives we're going to be able to save.
BROWN: Mr. Mayor, are the subways
operating?
GIULIANI: The subways are operating outside
of Manhattan. Outside of Manhattan, the subways are operating.
A couple of delays here and there, but other four boroughs,
the subways are operating. In Manhattan there are significant
delays. We thought we had the Lexington Avenue open, but it is
not. I'm just checking right now. The Lexington Avenue is not
open. The A train is working, and people will just have to
test and see. The best thing to do right now is to walk. It's
the safest and the best thing to do, is to walk to your
destination.
Schools have remained open. We've worked
with the chancellor to try to make certain that the schools
will remain open for as long as they have to, help parents
with the kids that would be coming home starting at around
1:00 or 2:00.
BROWN: Mr. Mayor, as you know better
than anyone, and certainly New Yorkers know, but people around
the country perhaps do not. This was election day here.
What is the status of the election?
GIULIANI:
We cancelled it. The governor and I decided about an hour, and
hour and a half ago that it made no sense to have an election
today. We needed all of those police officers who were at the
election sites. And we need to focus on rescue. So, we'll find
another day for the eelection. The governor and I made that
decision about an hour, an hour and a half ago.
BROWN:
Mr. Mayor, you are a very focused guy in moments like this. Is
it hard, given the magnitude of what's happened here and
around the country, to focus on what you have to do and not
just be angry?
GIULIANI: It's very hard, and it's very
because I know some of the people that are there. They are
personal friends and close friends who were in the building. I
haven't been able to find out if they are safe yet.
GREENFIELD: Your emergency command center, what some
people have called a bunker, was located, was it not, in one
of the World Trade Center buildings?
GIULIANI: It was
located close enough to it so that it was affected by it, it's
not in one of the buildings. But it was located right in that
area, as is city hall, the police department, and all of them
had to be evacuated.
So that area of Manhattan, once
the -- I was in a building at the time that we were using as
command center, and we were trapped in the building for a
while, for about 20 minutes, not able to get out, different
exits that were overcome with smoke and debris.
BROWN:
Mr. Mayor, this is a practical question. Do hospitals need
help, do they need -- ?
GIULIANI: Hospitals need all
the help they can get. We're getting a great deal of help from
the surrounding areas. The governor has mobilized the state in
order to make hospitals available to us outside of Manhattan.
Any hospital personnel or emergency personnel we want to come
in and volunteer, that'd be enormously helpful.
But
the best thing for us to do right now, we're trying to
coordinate, is to move people out of the city to hospitals in
surrounding areas which we're actually doing. So far, though,
our hospital system is -- we are very fortunate to have a
gigantic system.
BROWN: Do they have enough blood, do
they need blood, do they need people to come in and help them
out?
GIULIANI: I'm sure they will. We are getting the
national guard to relieve our people by early to late this
afternoon. They are being mobilized now. And three urban
search and rescue teams are going to come to New York City to
help us. Then anyone that wants to volunteer from surrounding
areas, volunteer fire departments and others, we're working
with them now to do that, to try to relieve our fire
department.
BROWN: It's a horrific day, Mr. Mayor.
GIULIANI: There's no possible way to begin to describe
it.
BROWN: No, there is not.
GIULIANI: To see
what happened there is -- of course it makes you very, very
angry. It's almost impossible to describe the level of anger
that you have, that somebody or someone would do something
like this. And all of the good and wonderful people that were
affected by this. There's no reason for this, there's no
excuse for this. Something like this is just something that
you never thought you would live to see.
BROWN: I
couldn't agree more, sir. Thank you for joining us.
GIULIANI: Thank you.
BROWN: New York's Mayor
Rudy Giuliani, on what was to be an election day, the mayor
not up for reelection because of term limits, but the election
has been postponed.
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