Relatives Hope For Good News

By John Moreno Gonzales and Robert Polner | STAFF WRITERS

September 12, 2001

At Bellevue Hospital Center, Anita Beblase, 62, searched in the confusion for sons who worked at each of the Twin Towers that once stood blocks away.

Anthony Beblase, 41, a broker on the 86th floor of Tower Two, was discovered at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in good condition.

But outside the main entrance of Bellevue, she continued to search for one of her sons, James Beblase, 45, a broker who worked on the 102nd floor of Tower One.

"I'm going from hospital to hospital, and I'm getting nowhere. Nowhere," she said. "They told me to come back in an hour when they may have a list. I said, 'I'll take a walk and have a drink while you compile your casualty list.'"

Wolfgang Chincalcini's day had spiraled into an evacuation of his Times Square office tower, a brief huddle in Central Park for safety and prayers at St. Ignatius Church on Park Avenue.

The fate of friend John Wallice propelled Chincalcini to Bellevue. Two years ago, they had worked together at an equities firm on the 104th floor of Tower One.

"Someone talked with him five minutes before the explosion, one of my friends," Chincalcini said outside Bellevue's entrance. "That was the last time anyone spoke to him. He was in that first building that got hit hard."

Chincalcini could not find Wallice on a list of about 250 people who had been to Bellevue for treatment by late afternoon.

The list was in the hands of William Mills as he sat on a stone bench outside Bellevue. He had been wandering the city in search of his wife, Lugbne Jackson, who works for Sun Microsystems in one of the World Trade Center's smaller buildings.

"It's been all day long," said the Hillside, N.J., man, who had heard but could not confirm that the building had collapsed.

He had been to St. Vincent's, New York University Medical Center and St. Clare's Hospital and Health Center; now he could not find his wife on Bellevue's list.

"I was going to go down to the Trade Center, but there's no way to get close. I'm going home now," he said.

Mary Ellen Vatalaro, 39, saw the second plane strike the World Trade Center from the Trump apartment buildings that she is helping to construct across from the United Nations.

News of the first crash had taken her to the 90th floor of the world's tallest residential building to witness what she quickly knew could not be an accident.

"Trump equals capitalism," she thought, and soon fled with others down the stairwell and onto the street.