Family members of the two Bermudians feared lost in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center have gone to New York in search of their loved ones.

The sister and niece of Boyd Gatton, who worked in the second skyscraper to be attacked for Fiduciary Trust Company International, left yesterday morning hoping to find some new information about the missing 39-year-old.

Pauline and Rukia O'Connor will spend the next few days visiting hospitals and burn units in the hope that their brother and uncle is among the injured.

However, they will also visit the Armoury, where relatives of the missing are listing their loved ones, as well as the morgues.

And Cheryl Burrows, mother of Rhondell Tankard, who had only been working at the World Trade Center for one day on secondment from her firm Aon Bermuda, left for New York on Monday. She told The Royal Gazette last week that she was still hopeful of finding her daughter alive, and said no matter what happened, she wanted to be close to the site in lower Manhattan.

Sharon Smith, the sister of Pauline and Boyd, said everyone was fearing the worst but hoping for the best. She said: "One of the first things my sister wanted to do was go to Boyd's apartment to get some DNA samples to take to the emergency team dealing with the disaster. She will go to the Armoury to check and see what has come up there, and she will get in touch with his job, as well. They are going to have to go around all the hospitals and morgues, as well as the burns centre. We really don't know what else to do. It is not a very nice task they face.

"We realise that no live bodies have come out since the day after it happened. If he didn't get out of the building, then it's unlikely there will be a body. He was on the 97th floor of the second building, that was just above where the plane hit. He had time to leave between the crashes, but whether or not he stayed to help people, we don't know.

"My sister is trying to be very brave. She and her daughter don't know what they are going to face."

Mrs. Burrows said she would believe her daughter was still alive until she saw for herself that she was not. She said: "Until we actually see, not hear, something ourselves, there is always hope. No matter what the outcome, I definitely would like to know and see exactly where it took place. I would get better piece of mind."

Mrs. Smith said she and her 75-year-old mother Betty were sitting anxiously by the phone.

She added: "If nothing fruitful comes of this, we will have some kind of memorial service so we can have some kind of closure and get on."