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CNN LIVE EVENT/SPECIAL

America's New War: Inside the Wreckage

Aired September 19, 2001 - 05:05   ET

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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: This rescue mission is also going underground. You saw what was above ground.

Well, CNN's Martin Savidge is going to take you literally inside tons of rubble, to see the danger, as well as the doubt, that these rescuers are dealing with.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Once, you had to crane your next to look at the World Trade Center. Now, rescuers bow their heads to peer inside.

Today, hope has been drive underground -- expressed by such words as "voids," "holds," "pockets," and "sub-levels."

One week after the towers fell and the list of missing soared, cameras from all sources and angles struggle to show what words have failed to tell. Perhaps it's not the big picture that says the most, but a collection of small ones.

This was the view from a camera carried by a firefighter. You are part of a human chain, passing pieces of two 110-story buildings and those who were in them -- bucket by bucket, hand to hand.

Not far away, the same camera captures this image from another robotic camera as it crawls into an opening, looking for life with eyes not seen.

A government video photographer had the advantage of access, capturing the haunting images of nearby store interiors, covered in so much dust they look like some ancient crypt, dormant a thousand years, not just seven days.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency camera stares into the blackness beneath the Trade Center complex, as a radio crackles with the question we all are asking.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (over radio): Is anybody out there?

SAVIDGE: I walk the site with another camera crew and struggle with my mental thesaurus, scribbling words like "obscene," "grotesque," "other-worldly."

In the end, I gave up. I wasn't prepared, and I wasn't alone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing came compare what we saw today with what we thought it was. It's just so dramatic -- the size of it, of the -- everything.

SAVIDGE: We watched the towers hit. We watched as they tumbled. We still watch as they dig through what remains.

Until now, Americans couldn't get enough of reality TV. That was before last week.

Martin Savidge, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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