story11113.xml

story11113.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-10-03

I was at work in our offices in Washington, DC at 1100 New York Ave, on the 8th floor. I'm an attorney at a patent law firm and our offices are in a building that is a few blocks east of the White House. A co-worker said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. On my office computer, I went to www.cnn.com and there was a picture of the first tower with a lot of smoke coming out of it.

Then we heard that the second WTC tower had been hit. Many of us went to watch the tv coverage in the multipurpose room. As I walked out of the room I mentioned that I could not believe that the towers were still standing and that the engineers should be really proud that the towers took a hit like that and were still standing. However, very shortly after that, they fell.

Another lawyer said to me that he had been speaking with an examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Crystal City, VA, (just south of the Pentagon) and that examiner had said, "There's an awul lot of smoke coming out of the Pentagon." Another person came into my office and said that people were literally running out of the White House.

People started to leave our office to try and make their way home. There really wasn't any panic. However, the roads and bridges into Virginia were mostly blocked with traffic and other routes were very slow. Many of the people in our office who lived in Virginia and drove just stayed put.

One of the ladies in our docketing department had four daughters who worked at the Pentagon. She was naturally quite worried. One of her daughters then called to tell her that three of them were safe but that they had not yet heard from the fourth daughter. (It was later learned that the fourth daughter was safe too.)

The traffic on the street outside our offices seemed to be at gridlock or at least very slow. We are very close to the Metro Center metro stop. That metro stop stayed open the entire day. However, the police had blocked off H Street and 11th Steet to the east of us and would not let any traffic on that part of H Street - no one could walk through that area to the Chinatown Metro Station; they had to go underground and take the train there.

I take the metro subway train into work. I stayed in the office until about noon. I wanted to wait until the main rush out of the city was over and also I wanted to make sure that everyone who needed a ride had a way home. I closed the doors of those offices that were empty to help protect the hallways from flying glass in case there was an explosion outside.

I remember being very surprised that the D.C. Metro subway trains kept running the entire morning. The train was not packed like I expected it to be; it looked like a normal day. Metro changed the train stops however, and did not stop at the Pentagon station or at Union Station (where the Amtrak trains connect).

I take the Metro Red Line from Metro Center to Glenmont, Maryland, about 15 miles norht of D.C. The Metro train engineers who ran the trains underground that whole morning are some of the bravest people I know. I was very grateful when we came above ground safely. There was no panic or outward emotion in the train station or trains. People were very quiet.

Driving home from the train station, I remember the news report on the car radio saying that the authorities could not account for four planes. As I drove home from the train station, I saw a "spotter" with binoculars on the Plaza del Mercado strip mall roof at the corner of Layhill and Bel Pre Road, about 15 miles north of D.C. He was looking up with his binoculars, scanning the skies to the north and west.

I am an amateur radio operator and a volunteer for a group that Montgomery County, Maryland, activates if communications are needed in times of emergency, called RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service). On Sept. 11, Montgomery County activated RACES to set up a hospital radio net that links communications among the main county hospitals; this was to faciliate communications among hospitals and the county Emergency Operations Center in case large numbers of the injured from the Pentagon were to be sent to Montgomery County. I was placed on stand by to report for a later shift - but it was soon determined that the wounded from the Pentagon were being handled by other hospitals and the net could close.

I don't remember if we took the next day off from work or if we went into work. I do remember that the trains into work on the first day that I went back seemed unusually quiet.

I learned that an attorney I knew, Lisa Raines, had been on the plane that flew into the Pentagon. Lisa and I had participated in the intellectual property/patent committee of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

Two of the people in my offices saw the plane that hit the Pentagon. The first person saw the plane as it flew east toward the Washington, as she was driving east on route 66 in Virginia. She said it seemed to be following route 66. The other person was driving on one of the highways that run in front of the Pentagon; he saw the plane just before it hit the Pentagon.

I received an e-mail from a friend who works at Amgen and from whom I had not heard in years; she wrote to tell me that a friend of hers who worked with Amgen and who had been in D.C. appearing before the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) had been on the plane that hit the Pentagon; she said her friend had felt lucky to catch that early flight because it meant she could be home to California sooner than she had expected.

Two of our attorneys were traveling and in Denver that day. When planes were grounded, they could not travel home. They rented a car and drove back to Virginia.