NEW YORK The company that owns One Liberty Plaza said Wednesday the building sustained no structural damage when the twin towers of the World Trade Center across the street collapsed in ruin after being slammed by two hijacked planes.
Earlier, rescuers searching for survivors amid the ruins of the landmark towers were sent scurrying from the area around One Liberty Plaza after firefighters and police said engineers had warned them of the building's imminent collapse.
The owners of the building, Brookfield Properties Corp. said after conducting a preliminary technical investigation by independent structural engineers that there was no structural damage to the building, which houses offices of investment company Goldman Sachs and the NASDAQ stock market.
There was confusion over the fate of the building when the remnants of the collapsed south tower of the twin 110-story World Trade Center went down, sending a plume of ash through the area and hundreds of people scurrying for safety.
Many people had speculated mistakenly that One Liberty Plaza, out of sight of the media and most of the rescue personnel, had collapsed. When the smoke cleared, however, the building was still standing.
"There has been some confusion about that address. It did not collapse. There was a not a secondary collapse. We sent people there to assess that structural damage," said New York Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen. "I can only tell you that there was a report of a crack, and we were checking it out."
Brookfield Properties said: "Despite media reports to the contrary, One Liberty Plaza has suffered no structural damage."
Officials said, however, that they were concerned about the Millennium Hotel in the same area.
"The one they're worried about is the Millennium Hotel," said Andrew Casey of the New York City Department of Information Technology.
Thousands of people were feared killed in Tuesday's coordinated assaults on the World Trade Center. Two hijacked passenger airplanes, laden with fuel, were deliberately crashed into the twin towers, where as many as 40,000 people worked daily.