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News media

My sotry on 9/11 is different then most, My boos and I stopped by the Pentagon around 5am on 9/11 on the way to national airport to catch a plane to new york for a safety meeting at our corporate office. We walked off the street into the office at 8:04am, we attended our meeting and during the middle of the meeting they came in and told us that a small plane had flown into the twin towers. We turned the news on and the meeting kept going. Then we got the news that they Pentagon was attacked, the company we worked for was AMEC, we were the contractor who had just finished the renovations of Wedge 1 of the pentagon. We had just turned the last area over on 9/10/01. We still had people on site doing punchlist and cleaning up, we were concerned because we didn't knew who was there but the early news had said the plane struck the building where the renovations were just made. We didn't find out until nearly noon that all of our workers had escaped harm, and one of them went back inside an helped other to escape. AMEC was one of the 4 contractors at ground zero as well as the pentagon. AMEC was brought in early to help start the clean up on 9/11. That night we walked done to the staging area, as close as we could get to the affeced area to see what had happened. It was strange walking down Broadway and no people or no vehicle traffic at all, we simply walked down the middle of the street. Just my luck get sent to NY on the company dime and the only place we found open to eat was a howard johnson's. NY was a ghost town, there were about 10-12 of us walking around and we were the only people we saw until we got nearer to ground zero and the place nearby were full of the people who lived in the area and were dislodged and hanging out at bars, restaurants, a chess club and even street corners all pretty silent for the number of people involved. We got up the next morning, we did check early on that we still had hotel rooms and that was a fiasco in its self, the meeting was still taking place, so we went. Early that morning we found that the governement had ask AMEC to assist and plan for the renovation and clean up the pentagon, After finding this out we tried to make arrangements to exit the city and return to washington, we were able to get train tickets out of penn station around noon. We left the meeting got our stuff and headed for the train station, it was packed, standing room only. we got out of the station minutes before it was closed due to bomb threats. It was very eery coming up on the other side of the rver in New Jersey and looking back to see no twin towers and just blumes of smoke rising from where the towering structures once stood, the empire state building now stood out in the haze, We arrived back in dc that afternoon and headed straight for the pentagon, we were not there an hour before we heard that there were bomb threats and the building was being evacuated again.
I got home later that day and had something like 120 messages on my home phone, like "I know you were at the pentagon, i am just checking to make sure your ok" and then the same person " i called 3 times, please call me back, I'm not calling back I hope your ok and there is a good reason you have not called back". Being that we flew up there that morning family didn't knew where we were and couldn't get a call through. I finally called my brother who had a 800 number and had him call everyone and let them know we were ok.

Up until thanksgiving that year I only had 3 days off, working 12 to 15 hour days assisting the FBI and the Arlington County Fire Marshals with clean up and then starting to begin the rebuilding process. We had promised that we would get the people back into there building by 9/11/02 and we did. It was an amazing process watching how workers how had just completed their work and now they had to come back and start over. It was amazing how everyone hade a goal and they put petty differences behind them and worked as one big machine with a singular goal. One of my task was to get the countdowen clock, to count down the days, hours and minutes until 09/11/02. It was not easy to find and had to listen to grief daily as to where it was and when is going to get here. Over the the month that made that year I made some great friend and will always think about them and the task we had and what we accomplished. I really could go on, it's amazing how much of this has stayed in my mind but this is a good place to stop. Although my boss said he would never fly with me again

I will spend it with family and friends ( my boss) lives near me I will either go and see him or call him. We thought that there going to be a reunion for the 10th aniversery, we had one at 5th and had 2 or 300 people there. We were looking forward to that, but nothing ever happened, too bad.