Reeling from the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many corporations across the country suspended operations yesterday, closing offices, scrambling plans and struggling to maintain contact with workers. Business on Wall Street and in much of downtown New York came to a virtual halt, and office buildings in major cities, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and the John Hancock Tower in Boston, were evacuated. During the course of the day, the businesses most directly affected by the attack on the World Trade Center -- including many Wall Street firms -- were groping to assess the impact of the events.

Many businesses were reluctant to speak in detail about their plans, saying that they were still trying to communicate with their employees and had not yet decided what they would do the next few days. Morgan Stanley, one of the world's largest investment banks, employs some 3,500 people in the World Trade Center, many at its individual-investor operations. It said it was working with officials to determine the facts regarding employees' safety.

Many companies braced for the news that employees had died in the air crashes or in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Akamai Technologies, a Cambridge, Mass., Internet company, announced that one of the people on the hijacked flight from Boston to Los Angeles was Daniel C. Lewin, one of its founders and the company's chief technology officer. Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, N.J., also said it was trying to remain open. "Our first priority today is that we can meet any medical needs," a spokesman said.

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Through the modern windows set in the 19th-century brick of a refurbished mill complex called Harvard Mills, Edgewater's Wakefield office looked today like thousands of other Internet companies: a warren of cubicles mixed with the occasional windowed office or conference room; bottles of spring water and Diet Coke scattered about; white boards and ergonomically correct chairs.

But it conveyed the eerie sense of having been abandoned in great haste. A laptop sat half-opened on one desk; on another desk lay some headphones, as if torn off when it became clear something was terribly wrong.

Today's shooting struck at what is normally a very stable Internet company, which has about 150 employees in Wakefield, a town of about 25,000 people 10 miles north of Boston. Mr. Stanley described Mr. McDermott as 6-foot-2, over 300 pounds and "with a big huge beard." He said that Mr. McDermott, who was nicknamed Mucko, seemed amiable, but that he had also seemed peculiar, "a bit of space-shot," who worked well when he worked but had repeatedly come in late. "He gave the impression he was a bit strange, that's all," Mr. Stanley said, but added he had never appeared threatening.

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It was one of the deadliest attacks in a series of such mass killings with guns in recent years, and it left Hawaiians particularly shocked because of the islands' idyllic surroundings and historically low crime rates. In 1998 there were just 17 homicides in Honolulu, a metropolitan area of nearly a million people. Five people were killed in a conference room and two in an office nearby on the second floor of the warehouse-like building. All the victims were men, ranging in age from 33 to the 58, the police said.

After the shootings, the police said, Mr. Uyesugi climbed into the van and drove to the Hawaii Nature Center, a public botanical garden and park in a rustic part of Oahu, Upper Makiki Heights. In a prepared statement, the mayor praised the police for bringing the standoff to an end without further loss of life, and said: "Our prayers and thoughts are with the families of the victims. They have been drawn into a horror that rarely touches our community."

The incident ranks among the 10 deadliest workplace shootings in the United States. Yesterday's attack left many Hawaiians, even those used to dealing with crimes and injuries, stunned. "I've been with the Fire Department for 23 years, and this is definitely the worst I've seen," Captain Soo said. "You just don't see this in Hawaii."

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A car bomb went off with a thunderous explosion here this morning, ripping through a Federal office building, collapsing walls and floors, and killing at least 31 people. Many others were buried in the wreckage, and the death toll seemed certain to rise.

At least 12 children whose parents had just dropped them off at a second-floor day-care center were among those immediately known dead in the deadliest bombing in the United States in 75 years.

As dusk fell, scores of the more than 500 people who normally work in the building were still missing. John Hansen, an Assistant Oklahoma City Fire Chief, said it appeared that dead and wounded victims were underneath the piles of concrete, plaster and glass. Late tonight, rain fell from the gray clouds that had threatened for much of the day, adding hardship to horror and raising the possibility the wreckage would shift, imperiling the trapped injured and their rescuers.

Attorney General Janet Reno, noting that the dead children ranged from 1 to 7 years old, and that some had been burned beyond recognition in the day-care center just above the curb where the bomb detonated, said the crime was a capital one and that the Government would seek the death penalty if those responsible were caught. She also said that there were 550 people working in the building and that about 300 were still unaccounted for.

Rescue teams, bringing in backhoes, bulldozers and other heavy equipment, dug in the rubble tonight in darkness, rain and a cutting wind, searching for victims in the flattened center of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Building.

Three survivors were pulled out of the wreckage by firefighers shortly after 9:30 P.M. There were cries from a woman in the basement, firefighters said, but they were having difficulty getting to her because there appeared to be bodies in the way. That vignette of horror was just one of hundreds played out all day long, from morning to dark.

Federal buildings in seven other cities were evacuated because of bomb threats, and security was tightened at Government buildings from coast to coast.

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