story10790.xml

story10790.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-09-07

I had lived in either Washington DC or its close-in suburbs for nearly 13 years when 9/11 happened, and worked all of that time downtown. On that horrible day I was at my job on 20th and L streets, about 7 blocks from the White House.

I remember how beautiful the day was; thunderstorms the evening before had cleared the air of humidity and clouds - it was one of those fall days in DC that make our hideous summers worthwhile. I had dropped my car off for some work that morning, so I was a little late getting in. Just after I got to my desk I heard a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Figuring it was a really bad private pilot, I did not join the folks going to our offices on the sixth floor (I worked on the fifth) to see our only television.

Then a few minutes later I heard that it was two planes, and they were commercial jets. I immediately rushed upstairs, and found most of my colleagues already watching. We didn't talk much, just stood and gaped as the flames poured out of the towers. As each person came in the room, someone would quickly whisper that there had been a terrorist attack and provide other quick details. It's funny, but I don't recall ever feeling concerned about my own safety; this was happening in New York, after all.

We heard Bush speak to the nation beginning around 9:30, and I then headed back to my desk. The plane that hit the Pentagon must have impacted right as I was in the concrete stairwell between floors. I felt nothing, but several of my colleagues on the south side of the building (which faced toward the Pentagon about 2 miles away) felt the impact, as all the windows on that side of the building flexed in and out from the shock waves of the explosion.

I got to my desk having just heard my name paged overhead, and figured it was my sister, a stay-at-home Mom in New Hampshire; I was right. As I picked up the phone I heard her say "they just hit the Pentagon, what the hell is going on?" She had been watching the Today show, as we had been in my office, and their Pentagon reporter had been giving an update as the building was hit.

Promising to keep my cell phone on and with me, I hung up on my sister to check out this latest horror. On my way back up to the sixth floor I encountered two female colleagues, who were both pretty hysterical. They had seen the same report my sister had, and one of the women had two children in the Pentagon's day care center, where her husband worked. Her husband, she knew, was out of the building at an off-site meeting, but she had no way of knowing whether her kids were all right. Thank God the plane hit nearly the exact opposite side of the building from the center.

The rest of the day is something of a blur, with wild reports about a car bomb at the State Department, a bomb on Metro, shutting down the rail system and stranding us downtown, another plane on the way to DC. My company decided to evacuate, and shortly after the second tower fell we left; another colleague who lived near me offered me a ride home, as it was clear Metro would not be an option (although it had not been attacked, the system was not prepared for the evacuation of downtown DC - it was nearly impossible to get on a train). I only had to get down 5 flights of stairs that day, and cannot imagine what it was like for those people evacuating the WTC - the sense of panic in the air at my building was frightening enough.

There were four of us in the car, and it took 2 1/2 hours to get the seven miles from my office to my apartment (I lived closest, so was first to be dropped off). During the drive, we monitored reports on the 4th hijacked plane and tried to contact the parents of the intern who was in the car (she had recently moved from South Dakota, and could not get her parents at work). We had 4 different cell phones with 4 different providers, and none of us could get a call through. At the same time as this my sister was panicking in New Hampshire after she was no longer able to contact me by phone; she called her husband instead and told him "they're going to kill my brother, I just know it."

When I did get home, and could finally call my sister to tell her I was all right, it was unnerving. Television was devoted only to word of the attacks, and the local stations did an amazing job not only covering the attack at the Pentagon, but also the widespread local problems from the virtual desertion of downtown DC. Once the traffic ended in the early afternoon, there was only the sounds of fighter planes above the city, and helicopters circling Walter Reed Army Hospital, which was just south of my apartment in Silver Spring. I didn't sleep much that night or the next with the constant sounds of the aircraft.

When we did get back to work, on Thursday, it was to armed National Guard troops on every corner, and a lot of "working through" the events of that day. At my office there were stories of our staff members who had been trapped in other states by the air travel ban (including some in mid-town Manhatten who were thankfully fine). There were also those people who had lost loved ones in the attacks; one woman had three relatives at the WTC still unaccounted for that day. The ex-boyfriend I had at the Pentagon was lucky and got out of the building without a scratch. By that weekend I had heard from others whose stories were not as happy, including the flight attendant who had been good friends with the co-pilot of American 77, which hit the Pentagon.

It will never be the same to live in DC, because now we know we live with a target on our backs. The antrax attacks in the city later that fall (not to mention the sniper attacks the next year) added to the stress. I still love the city though, and chose to buy a house here last year. I don't like the sounds of low-flying planes, though.