Rain dampens trade centre rescue efforts

Sopping-wet search crews slogged through the rubble of the World Trade Centre under grey skies that mirrored their dwindling hopes for miracle rescues.

President George Bush made a morale-boosting visit to the site yesterday afternoon, but the grim reality was that for a second straight day, no survivors emerged from the debris.

‘‘Thank you for your hard work, thank you for making the nation proud,’’ Bush told rescuers through a bullhorn.

Drenched, mud-spattered rescue crews chanted ‘‘USA! USA!’’

Occasionally, the crews halted all work to listen for any noise a sharp knock or muffled voice that might lead them to a survivor.

‘‘When they call for silence on the pile... (it) caused me to say a prayer every time,’’ said volunteer Richard Coppo. ‘‘It meant there was a possibility - a hope that we had found something.’’

But all they heard was silence. And then they resumed moving rubble - 10,425 tons and counting.

More than 4,700 people remained missing. Just five people have been pulled alive from the ruins since two hijacked jetliners toppled the twin towers on Tuesday.

The official death toll remained at 184, while the number of people injured including those injured in the rescue efforts climbed to 4,300, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said.

New York City’s two airports, where a dozen people of Middle Eastern descent were detained and then released, reopened yesterday after an 18-hour shutdown.

One person was still being questioned, but was not charged, said Barry Mawn, head of the FBI’s New York office.

‘‘We are running down hundreds, if not thousands, of leads around the country,’’ Mawn said.

Newark International Airport, close to New York, also reopened. Commercial flights were cleared on Thursday.

Work at ‘‘ground zero’’ - the enormous mass of wreckage created when the two skyscrapers collapsed was complicated by a ferocious overnight downpour that turned dust into mud and made even the simplest tasks more difficult and dangerous.

Workers who have battled fatigue and choking smoke were slowed by the muck. One worker reported finding mud-caked body parts.

They were armed with a new tool: directional antennas and other radio frequency-tracking equipment that ‘‘sniff out’’ signals from buried cell phones, beepers and other devices. The hope is that the signals might correspond to trapped victims.

Warplanes flew overhead to ensure security as Bush’s helicopter made a slow circle over the wreckage. Awaiting him on the ground was an army of search and rescue workers. Some had placed small American flags on their earth-moving equipment.

Before arriving in New York, Bush attended a globally televised prayer service in the nation’s capital that included major political leaders and previous presidents.

In a symbolic gesture, a Muslim cleric, Imam Muzammil H Siddiqi, was among the first to speak.

At the service, Bush said: ‘‘This nation is peaceful but fierce when stirred to anger.’’

‘‘This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others,’’ he said. ‘‘It will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.’’

Bush signed an order authorising the call-up of as many as 50,000 reserve military members, and officials said the first mobilisations could begin this weekend.

Administration officials have identified Osama bin Laden as the main suspect behind this week’s attacks. The FBI released the names of 19 men it said had hijacked the four planes.

In addition to the two planes flown into the twin towers, one crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington, and the last crashed in rural Pennsylvania, apparently after passengers struggled with the hijackers.

At the Pentagon, rescuers worked yesterday to shore up the collapsed section of the building while military leaders inside the Defence Department’s headquarters tried to boost spirits.

‘‘You feel grieving for the individual in there, the soldier who has fallen,’’ said Sgt Brock Bowman of Olympia, Washington state, helping put bodies into bags as rescue workers retrieved them from the rubble. ‘‘You also feel some anger, and this is justified.’’

Government authorities said 190 people - a combination of military and civilian employees on the ground and the passengers in the plane - were believed to have died.

Investigators recovered the voice and data recorders from the jet that slammed into the Pentagon and found the data recorder from the jet that crashed in Pennsylvania was recovered on Thursday.

The Wall Street financial district - closed off since the attacks - should be back in business on Monday.

The stock markets, closed for the longest stretch since the crash of 1929, are also due to resume operations on Monday.

City officials hope to reopen another slice of central Manhattan to thousands of displaced residents.

For the first time since the tragedy, the mayor said a handful of looters had slipped into the banned area of Manhattan below 14th Street. One man was arrested carrying £2,000 in watches from a Tourneau store.

In another incident, a woman dressed in medical scrubs and carrying a cell phone showed up at a police station insisting she had just spoken to her husband who was beneath the rubble. When her story proved false - she also said her husband was a police officer and was with nine other survivors - she was charged with reckless endangerment, obstructing fire operations and filing false reports.

‘‘She’s a nut,’’ said Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.

Kerik said several people had been arrested for using false identification or pretending to be volunteers, then committing crimes in the cordoned-off disaster zone.

And Giuliani said a phoney telemarketer was soliciting bogus contributions for a nonexistent fund to help the families of victims.

‘‘We’d really like to catch them and make an example of them,’’ the mayor said.