Hoping Beyond Hope

Desperate families of missing search NYC hospitals

By Sean Gardiner, Margaret Ramirez and John Moreno Gonzales | STAFF WRITERS

September 13, 2001

They came clutching photos and homemade fliers of their missing family members.

They flashed the hope in their hands to television cameras, hospital officials and anyone who would listen to their desperation.

Thousands of friends and family gathered at Manhattan hospitals yesterday, all wandering on a more than 24-hour search for loved ones who had been inside the World Trade Center when it still stood.

Early yesterday, many of the hopeful were directed to New York University Medical Center on 28th Street and First Avenue, where the separate admissions lists compiled by New York City hospitals were turned into a somber master document.

But the crowd swelled to 200 by noon, and the lines were transferred to the Administration for Children's Services two blocks away. There it grew to 2,000, as a hospital minister and members of the Red Cross offered prayers and bottled water.

Berta Barragam stood for news of her husband, Antonio Javier, who worked as a cook at the Windows on the World rooftop restaurant. The last time she saw him was 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.

"When I heard about it, I thought the worst," she said. "We have a 4-year-old son. I don't know what to feel right now. How should I feel?"

Not far from her, a man looking for a friend who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, a law firm in the Trade Center, collapsed in line, yelling out, "I can't stand up any more. I can't take this."

If the names of loved ones were not found, officials diverted the searchers from their haphazard paths and sent them inside the building for a missing persons interview. A medical examiner also waited, presumably to compare descriptions and photographs of the missing to identifying features of the dead.

Because the list had only hospitals in the New York City area, many clung to the hope that their loved ones had been taken to New Jersey instead. At other sites, some gave up hope and some recounted the words last heard from the ones they sought.

At Bellevue Hospital Center, Rosa Colon said one floor was all that had separated her from boyfriend Edward Calderon at One World Trade Center.

"I called him and said, 'Get out,'" remembered a distraught Colon, who worked as a lobby security guard while her boyfriend worked in a basement Port Authority room.

"He said he was going to help people. I never heard from him since."

Brenda Trinadad, also at Bellevue, said her brother Michael Trinadad, 34, called his fiancee from the 103rd floor.

"Men were screaming. Women were screaming," Brenda Trinadad said. "She told him to break the window to get some air. Then his phone went dead. I truly don't believe he's alive, but I'm not sure what to do next."

Not far away, Nanette Shaw searched for friend Alena Sesinoz, 57, of Brooklyn, who worked on the 98th floor of Marsh and McLennan, an insurance company.

"She was in her office from 10 [minutes] to 8 in the morning, and she called her companion to say she'd be home to take care of her because [the companion] was sick," Shaw said. But her companion never heard from her.

Matt Dettleff sought Kevin Williams, a salesman for Sandler O'Neill on the 104th floor of Tower Two.

"After the first plane crash that hit Tower One, someone called him to ask what he was doing," Dettleff said outside of Bellevue. "He said he was evacuating. No one's heard from him since."

Williams' parents got a call instructing them to hurry to Bellevue last night.