Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 86

More Than By Ben Kubasik STAFF WRITER There had never been anything like yesterday's coverage of the World Trade Center disaster in New York television history either for those watching or those working on it. Throughout the day and into the evening, TV screens were filled with people, their faces smudged with smoke, pouring out into the street. TV journalists, like those from newspapers, slogged through the chaos, looking for eyewitnesses and officials at the scene. The shocking, live reality was more compelling than any TV drama. All the stations responded quickly with reporters and crews following the 12:18 p.m.

blast and carried on through the afternoon and into the evening, with WCBS Ch. 2 the only New York TV station able to transmit an over-the-air signal. Other stations managed to get line feeds on some cable systems almost immediately and to others late in the afternoon. Only WNBC Ch. 4 as early as mid-afternoon was able to get onto outlying cable systems and over the air by using WLIW Ch.

21's transmitter. WWOR Ch. 9's coverage was seen on CNN, with which it often exchanges regular news reports. Several people, trapped in smoke-filled rooms at the World Trade Center, watched Ch. 2 on miniature, battery-powered TVs and called its weatherman, Frank Field, to find out what to do.

Cable's New York 1, an all-news station, initially ran only graphics about the blast, before finally getting live cameras on the scene more than an hour later. For many people, all-news radio was their main information source, especially with some television on the blink. Ch. 4's John Miller, at 4:05 p.m. yesterday, was the first TV journalist to report the suspicions of authorities that a bomb had caused the blast.

Ch. 2 reported the same thing shortly afterward. Several engineers and technicians who maintain TERROR IN THE TOWERS Just a TV Drama TV-station transmitters atop One World Trade Cen- tables were set, wine stood in glasses poured for early ter were trapped on the 110th floor. Ch. 2's Debbie luncheon diners, and rolls were in place for others Matut, three months pregnant, was rescued from the anticipated before the blast occurred.

roof by helicopter. Ch. 2 reporter Marcia Kramer's husband walked Ch. 31's transmitter supervisor Bernie Munitz and down the 100 or so stories with throngs of others. engineer Alex Acevedo looked in on the 107th floor's When she learned he was safe, Kramer put him on the eerily quiet Windows on the World restaurant, where air.

If You Could See It By Verne Gay STAFF WRITER Local television was thrown into chaos yesterday in the wake of the powerful blast that rocked the World Trade Center and temporarily forced the shutdown of the TV transmitters atop one of the buildings. With the exception of WCBS Ch. 2, which transmitted continuously throughout the day from a backup antenna on the Empire State Building, every major New York area station was disrupted. The others had no backup transmitters for those on top of the Trade Center. The transmitters beam their signals across the metropolitan area to those without cable television and to some cable systems.

Most stations indicated last night they would have to wait until the return of power to resume normal operations. Signals from WNBC Ch. 4 and WNET Ch. 13 crashed almost immediately after the blast at 12:18 p.m., while other stations managed to stay on the air for nearly another hour. Each of the major New York stations has a transmitter on top of One World Trade Center.

But the blast caused what some believe was a power surge, which knocked out Chs. 2 and 13. About 12:31 p.m., Con Edison began shutting down power to both buildings but, for reasons that were unclear to TV station executives, the stations were not allowed access to several backup generators in the basement of the Building Has Awed Champions, Critics By Anthony Scaduto STAFF WRITER New York From the first, when odiferous river bottom was being dredged up to fill in part of the lower Hudson River and expand the city's boundaries westward, to its completion decades later as the tallest buildings ever constructed to that time, the twin-towered World Trade Center has been held in awe by architects, engineers, tourists and even blase New Yorkers. At the topping out of Two World Trade Center in 1972, a Chambers Street merchant warned a reporter: "That thing's so awesome it's going to tip Manhattan Island towards the Jersey coast some The Sears Tower in Chicago rises slightly higher, but the Trade Center has perhaps more panache if only because there are two towers. There are actually six buildings in the complex, surrounding an enormous plaza than Piazza San Marco in Venice," says the American Institute of Architects New York guide).

Total cost to the Port Authority over the years of construction: more than $1 billion. Superlatives about the towers abound: the 110 stories rise 1,350 feet (with the tip of the TV antenna on Tower 1 reaching 350 feet higher). The towers and four other Trade Center buildings on the 16-acre site 00 4 005 86 tower; none of the stations was transmitting from One World Trade Center by 1:30 p.m. It then turned into one of the most confusing days on the local airwaves in recent history both for viewers and for stations trying to get some sort of signals to them. For many viewers, the screen went blank on some channels and remained that way for hours while for others, there was picture but no audio.

Ch. 2 was both lucky and quick-moving. Immediately after the blast it switched to its transmitter at the Empire State Building, where it beamed signals without interruption. Ch. 4, to reach viewers on Long Island, contacted WLIW Ch.

21 and got that station to re-transmit its signal to those viewers without cable. (WPIX Ch. 11 also managed to send its signal out on a low-power station, Ch. 17.) Ch. 13, which remained off the air into the evening, said it would switch its programming to low-power WNYE Ch.

25. Cablevision of Long Island reported "minimal" disruptions. And subscribers to Manhattan Cable and Paragon saw little disruption. The reason is that some TV stations are "wired" directly into the cable system, and were unaffected by the transmitter blowout. But many other cable subscribers in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey were, for a time, left in the dark.

required 3,000 miles of electrical wire. About 192,000 tons of structural steel were used in construction, and the center has exactly 43,600 windows, 4,000 doors, 7,000 plumbing fixtures, 198 elevators. The six buildings have 10-millionsquare feet of office space, seven times that in the Empire State Building. Daily population is about 150,000 people, including visitors; if the complex were a city it would rank as the sixth largest in the state. Talk of the World Trade Center began at the end of World War II.

Construction finally got the green light from the state in 1962. Construction began the following year. The first building, Two World Trade Center, opened for business a decade later. Art and architectural critics have been divided. A few call the buildings "beautiful" and "graceful." Most treated the project somewhat harshly, as intrusions on a once-lovely downtown skyline.

The late Lewis Mumford, after decrying the design and the buildings' impact on the environment, summed up the negative side this way: "Tall buildings are outmoded concepts. This is Victorian thinking. Skyscrapers have always been put up for reasons of advertising and publicity. They are not economically sound or efficient. the Trade Center's fate is to be ripped down as Photo by Anthony Fioranelli HELP HOVERS.

A helicopter ferries rescue crews to the World Trade Center's roof following the early afternoon explosion..