World Trade Center Probe: The View From the Tower

TENANTS at the World Trade Center are trying to adapt to life in the wake of the explosion that could put the twin towers out of operation until April.

On Friday, in the middle of a snowstorm, fire trucks and bomb- squad vehicles answered another bomb threat to the towers. Inside, the occupants were not bothered. "We get two bomb threats a day," Ian Weir, who works at one of the commodity exchanges, says matter-of-factly.

Like other people who work at the Trade Center, however, Mr. Weir said he feels better now that one of the alleged terrorists is behind bars. "Sure, I feel safer," he says, although he adds that, in his view, plenty of likely suspects remain on the loose.

"He was the fall guy," Weir says, referring to Mohammed Salameh, the suspect arrested by the FBI last week. Agrees Don Rogers, an accountant who works near the twin towers: "I think there's a lot more involved in this."

While dealing with bomb threats, people who work at the center must move office equipment and files elsewhere. They sign up with the port authority to get escorted to their offices.

Seated outside the authorization area on Friday was Mauro Pace, a mechanical engineer who works for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Mr. Pace says he was doubly fortunate. On the day of the blast he had to walk down only 30 stories of the building. At the time, he was working on a new command and control center for the World Trade Center; he was on the 30th floor, not in the basement where the center was located. It was destroyed in the explosion.

The tower itself resembles a war zone. There is still a very heavy police presence. Outside the garage where the bomb exploded are police vehicles of nearly every description. Men with "FBI" and "ATF" inscribed on their windbreakers trudge in and out of the garage, sifting through the rubble. This weekend they finally reached ground zero where the blast took place. It is likely to yield still more information.