Hoping Against Hope At City's 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.

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.

Staff writers Mae Cheng, Tami Luhby and Glenn Gamboa contributed to this story.