Sorry this is soo long and probably the longest post I've written here. It's a book not a post... sorry in advance.
I was here at work on 9/11. I was driving in to work when I heard about the first plane and thought small plane accident -- then right before I pulled into the garage I heard a second plane. So I stayed glued to the internet for a bit when all of a sudden my boss comes running out “What’s going on over there at the Pentagon?” because there was a noise and then a little wisp of smoke that quickly became huge black billows of smoke. If I look straight across and out my bosses window I can see the monument and that day it was a terrible site to see -- the monument with huge black clouds as a back drop. By this time our managing partner comes out and tells us he just got off the phone with the Pentagon and they were doing construction and its just a construction fire - not to worry, and then he looked out the window and realized - it was something different. I looked on the internet for news on the pentagon and it still hadn’t been reported. I called my mother to let her know what was going on and a lot of girls and a few guys here were crying. I was trying hard not to and had a lump in my throat. Those of us that weren’t crying you could easily see the fear in our eyes.
After finally hearing in the news that the Pentagon indeed was hit by a plane, we started hearing rumors that bombs were going off at the white house close by and that the executive office had been hit and other targets were getting bombed. Every bone in my body was telling me to leave, but we weren’t allowed. Management made the decision that it was safer here in the building -- all be it way up on the penthouse suite than leaving. I didn’t like the thought of being up so high so I went on about 15 smoke breaks... I just wanted to be down on the ground. Each time I’d run into friends of mine that work for another firm in the building and I’d tell them what happened and I’d let them into our floor to see for themselves. I called my mother again and she said “what the hell are you still doing there!???!!! Leave!!!!!” and I explained we can’t leave and my voice was cracking and shaky and sounded foreign to me just trying to speak.
Some of the secretaries here were typing out their wills and emailing them and the girl next to me was crying a lot so I tried to be strong. And then two young girls that sit on the other side came up and said “[my name] what should we do???” I said “I don’t know we’ve never had THIS happen before” and then I got back on the phone as everyone was still staring and crying at the window when we heard another explosion -- everyone ran from the window and was screaming and crying running past me saying another bomb just went off and my mother could here the new commotion in the background and again said “LEAVE!!!!”. The second explosion ended up being the wall on the Pentagon falling about 20 minutes after impact. Finally we get an email saying we can leave if we wanted to.
During this commotion two friends here at work needed a ride back to southern Maryland -- it was out of my way but I just wanted all of us to get out of here -- people were running through the crosswalks and to wherever they were going - we tried to remain calm and talked about regular things.
Enroute to home we got stuck in gridlock traffic and people were just ignoring the traffic signals as if they were just decorations - it was literally the mass exodus scenario. It was rough trying to drive (this is after DC government formally announced that business districts should evacuate). Either way people were running red lights and it was absolute gridlock. One lady threatened me to let her cut me off so she could get in front of me. Then we heard on the radio to be leery of truck bombs, etc... and we had at that point inched and were in front of the capitol. There was all kinds of trucks around that we couldn’t get away from. We were also instructed to look for things suspicious or people that were suspicious. My coworker said -- “look over there -- there’s a homeless guy” I looked and he was sitting on the bench taking about 100 CVS bags and putting them in a tuperwear container -- back and forth, back and forth...” we just laughed at this point... what else could we do? :shrug: After more than 3 hours we finally get to southeast and the same coworker said “boy [my name] I bet you’ve never been soo happy to be in southeast before -- huh?”
It was a great feeling to finally get out of what I thought was a bullseye. We listed to the radio the rest of the way home trying to figure out what was happening and heard about the plane in PA that was headed back here and we just all three prayed and said a prayer. Later we prayed more after hearing about those brave folks that took over the plane. They very well may have saved our lives - and other people’s lives. It took several weeks to get used to seeing planes fly so low and close to the building as they fly by behind the monument and land at the airport. Not trying to be funny or anything but the only thing that comforted me was I’d check to see if they had the wheels down. If the wheels were down that made me think they were intending to land instead of crash.
I apologize if this takes too long to read -- I just remember that day like it was yesterday. The next year on 9/11 at the exact same time the pentagon was hit -- they mandated that we have a fire drill so I had to climb down 13 flights of stairs instead of a moment of silence which I think was just asinine.
