nmah1281.xml

nmah1281.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-06

It was the morning of Sept. 11, with nothing unusual happening at the Turner Institute of Police Science in the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. except my co-workers and I were providing some training for new police recruits who were going to help us with videotaping the demonstrators at the I.M.F./World Bank meetings that were to take place in DC later that month. As we were in a classroom discussing the functions of the cameras they would be using, a police officer came into the room to let me know that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center in New York and that it was on the T.V. At that moment we told the class to take a break for about 20 min. and we went to our office to watch the news reports. We saw the 2nd plane hit the other tower and then we heard about the plane which hit the Pentagon. At that point classes were cancelled and my co-workers and I, who work in the Media Production Unit of the Metropolitan Police Department
packed up our camera equipment and decided to go straight to the Pentagon and see if we could do anything to help.
As we were on the way, the Department was in the process of closing down some of the highways and bridges in the area and we found ourselves needing to stop to help direct traffic around a couple of congested areas. Once we finished that we were able to get onto the grounds of the Pentagon and it was chaos as everyone was being evacuated from the area. We heard on our police radio that our helicopter unit and the persons on the ground at the Pentagon were having trouble organizing, so we were able to help give the helicopter unit and the organizers for the military assistance by letting the helicopter know who to contact so that they could land and be of assistance.
We were one of the first video units on the scene and when we started to film the tragedy, there seemed to be a sence of shock but commitment to the efforts of everyone doing their job to try and rescue and help anyone who needed it. As I was shooting the scene of members of the miliary leaving the Pentagon, rescue personnel arriving on the scene, police officers attempting to close off access to the area, I was walking toward to impact site of the Pentagon expecting to find large parts of the airplane scattered over the ground and pieces of the plane sticking out of the Pentagon, but there was nothing on the ground except a couple of knocked over street lights and a piece of what looked like the landing gear from the plane. The portion of the Pentagon that the plane hit was a great mound of fire and smoke. If you didn't know what happened at that site, you would think that the building simply blew up from some great interior explosion. I could not see any evidence of an airplane at all and I was only about 150 yards away from the zone since we were with the police department.
When I am in a situation like that, I have a tendency to concentrate on the matter of my job which is to get the best shots I can possibly get to document the things that were happening and to show the effects of the event on not only the building but the people involved and their response to the attack. I found that once I finished my job and took the time to relax I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd seen and listening to news reports of the terrorism in New York, Pennsylvannia, and here in D.C. Its a day that I pray to God will never happen again.

Since I work for a law enforcement agency, I am forced to be more observant of things which ordinarially I might consider normal or run of the mill. The Metropolitan Police Department is probably considered one of the best police agencies in the nation and as such we try to stay on the forefront of security issues.

The people who died and the ease with which the terrorist were able to do what they did.