New York - The flow of casualties to New York hospitals from the World Trade Centre attacks slowed yesterday evening, although the death toll at emergency rooms began mounting and hospital officials said they had yet to see a fraction of the dead and wounded.
Dr Bruce Logan, chief of medicine at NYU Downtown Hospital, told Reuters: "The vast majority of victims have still not gotten here. The hospital staff is really pulling together, but the worst I'm afraid is still yet to come."
"The flow of ambulances at St Vincent's has ominously slowed," said one police officer on duty outside that hospital in lower Manhattan.
"I have been in here since this morning," said Dr James Dillard at St Vincent's.
"It is like a normal busy day, but it's eerie. We expected to get overwhelmed. It's surreal inside, but there are no sick patients.
"It's a bad sign that there are no mass casualties. The fact that we aren't getting lots of people means a lot of people are dead." Dr Dillard said.
Fires continued to rage at the scene of the attacks on the 110-storey twin towers, preventing police and rescue personnel from getting to the wounded or dead, witnesses said.
"Once the fire is put out, we are expecting a wave of people to come in with crushed injuries," Dr Omid Javadi, surgical resident at NYU Downtown Hospital, said. "We are also expecting a much larger wave of people to come in pretty much dead."
Makeshift field hospitals and triage centres were established in lower Manhattan, at a sports complex on the city's lower West Side and in New Jersey.
No official casualty tolls from the attacks were available and New York Mayor, Mr Rudolph Giuliani said numbers would not be known for a day or two.
"The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear, ultimately," Mr Giuliani said at a news conference.
An emergency call for blood donations and volunteer nurses and doctors went out. At several locations, the lines of donors stretched around city blocks.
Inside a sports complex that hugs the Hudson River, two television sound stages were swarming with doctors setting up a triage centre in preparation for ambulances.