story1190.xml

story1190.xml

born-digital

story

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no

2002-08-19

September 11, 2001 ? It was such a beautiful morning ? you know the kind, a sky of clear blue with just a few puffy white clouds. It was the second week of a new job on Capitol Hill and I was feeling good.

As I drove to the Post Office in Old Town Alexandria (the starting point of my daily commute), I heard over the radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. The announcers mused that it was surely an accident and I was thinking that it must have been one of those small prop planes that had gone off course somehow.

Not thinking any more of it, I walked to the Metro at Braddock Road as usual and got on the yellow line towards the District. After making my transfer at L?Enfant Plaza and getting off at Capitol South, I made my way up to street level where the Cannon House Office Building and the Library of Congress stand on opposite sides of First Street ? the Capitol a short distance away.

Having come out of the narrow, darkened tunnels that make up the Metro system, I was again struck by the beauty of that day. But as I walked the two blocks towards my office, I could tell something was not quite right. It wasn?t anything obvious, just a weird feeling I was getting seeing people standing in clusters on the street and talking more than usual to others in the coffee shop that I stopped in on my way. I overheard things like ?a fire on the mall,? ?a white plane flying over the Capitol? ? not knowing what they were talking about, I moved on.

When I got to my office, I looked around the corner where a small TV is usually tuned in to C-SPAN so that the lobbyists in my building can watch our Congress in action. Today, it seemed that everyone in the building was standing there watching it together.

I put my things in my office and made my way down the hall to where the TV was and saw that is was tuned to CNN. Displayed on the screen were the two towers of the WTC with smoke billowing out of them. Everyone just stood there watching with eyes wide, not knowing what to make of what was going on ? they looked worried.

Of course, they knew what I did not at that moment ? it wasn?t a prop plane that hit one of the Trade Center buildings, it was a commercial jet -- fully loaded with fuel AND passengers; it wasn?t just one tower, it was both; and that the Pentagon had also been hit.

I was dumbfounded to think that my yellow line train had just pulled through the Pentagon station ? was it at the same moment that the plane was delivering its lethal payload?

It all began to come together ? so many people on the street talking about planes and fires.

As we continued to watch, we heard that there was a plane unaccounted for and that there was a possible bomb at the State Department. Then, one of the guys who works both in my building and at one of the House office buildings rushed in and said that the office buildings were being evacuated. I started thinking: the missing plane, the Capitol ? bombs, fires. Am I safe here?

As I was going over these things in my mind, I was staring at the scene in New York still displayed on the TV screen and then ? the south tower collapsed. I couldn?t believe it. All those poor people! They just went to work like any other day ? just like me!

I went back to my office and tried to call my husband. I was trying to decide what I should do ? do I stay at work (two blocks from the Capitol)? With the Hill being evacuated, should I wait until most of the people have left the city?

I couldn?t get through on the phone. I tried a few more times then went back to the TV. I heard that the Metro wasn?t running the yellow line over the bridge to Virginia. At this point I was wondering how in the world I was going to get home if I decided to go.

I went back to my office and the phone rang, it was my friend out in Fairfax. She said she had called to be sure that I had left ? I told her I wasn?t sure if that was the best thing to do. I thought she was overreacting. Did I really need to panic? She finally convinced me that I needed to leave the city ? but then the question was how?

She and I both started trying to call people who we knew would be driving out of the city -- I really didn?t want to go underground in the Metro system ? who knew what could happen? We couldn?t really work out the ride, so I ended up with two choices ? take the Metro or walk.

I decided I would try the Metro, but would take the blue line if I had to ? that way was almost totally underground, which I was nervous about, but it still seemed better than trying to walk the seven miles to my house.

By this time, the second tower had collapsed. It was time to leave.

I went to the Capitol South Metro, hurried in and asked the station manager what the best way was to get to Virginia (not knowing if the yellow line was running there over the bridge, by the Pentagon and the airport). She asked where I wanted to go, I said it didn?t matter. I figured anywhere in Virginia was better than getting stuck in DC.

I took the blue line ? it was the first day of many to come where there were no stops at the Pentagon or National Airport. The train got incredibly crowded as we headed through downtown, but people were talking quietly, nobody was panicked. When the train got outside at Arlington Cemetery, I called my husband. I got voice mail. I left a message that I was heading home and that he should too. I loaned my cell phone to the man sitting next to me who wanted to call his wife.

When I got off the train at Braddock Road, it was so surreal. I had gotten on in the morning when our world was at peace and gotten off when we were at war. Police officers were on the platform and there was a smell lingering in the air. It caught in your throat even from that distance away ? it was the burning jet fuel from the Pentagon.

I made it home to an empty house and turned on the TV ? something I didn?t get very far away from for the next week or two. The news played the scenes of the planes flying into the towers over and over again and of the building collapsing over and over again.

When my husband got home, he looked at the TV for the first time that day just as they were showing the south tower collapsing. He had the same reaction that I did when I saw it ? eyes wide, hand over mouth, a sigh of ?oh, no? and then a tear springing to his eye.