On the Scene

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Chapter One
On the Scene

As New York City's morning news shows were winding up their broadcasts on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, reports began trickling in that an airplane had crashed into the North Tower (Tower 1) of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Footage of the burning tower appeared live on televisions across the United States. Many people initially thought that a small, personal airplane had crashed into the building. This belief changed about twenty minutes later when a second airplane—a Boeing 767—flew straight into the second tower (the South Tower) of the World Trade Center. Suddenly it became clear that the crashes were not accidents; the planes had been hijacked and flown deliberately into the buildings.

By the time the second plain hit, almost every television station and radio channel in the world provided live coverage of the attacks. People watched and listened as the twin towers burned. Firefighters rushed to the scene, and paramedics loaded supplies onto ambulances as frightened office workers fled the area. Then, about an hour after the attack began, the South Tower collapsed, its structural support beams melting from the heat of the fire. The North Tower soon followed, leaving the area covered in rubble and ash. By the time it was over, around 3,000 people had died.

Meanwhile, networks reported that two other planes had also crashed—one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing 189 people, and one into a field southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing all forty-five passengers and crew on board. As these reports came in, many people began to believe the four crashes were an attack against the United States. In response, politicians and military leaders called the attacks an act of war and vowed that they would not go unpunished.

Escape from the Seventy-Second Floor

Mehdi Dadgarian is a civil engineer from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who also works as a consultant to the New York City Port Authority. He had arrived in New York City on September 10, 2001, for a meeting at the World Trade Center the following day. He was making telephone calls in his office on the seventy-second floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower when the first plane crashed into the building. Below is his account of his escape from the tower.

How can I not believe in miracles when I walked out of the World Trade Center unhurt? How can I not believe in love when I see the outpouring of it from the friends and family who have been calling and e-mailing me since the attack? Rather than seeing the world as an uglier place after the attack, I see it as a beautiful place where people give all they can when called upon to do so.

I will never forget the police and firemen who walked past me to save lives in the building and never walked out. Those who went in knowing that the chances were good they would never walk out. I will never forget the people I worked with who were not as lucky as me. As the stories come out about those who did not make it, you realize how every second made such a difference; how one wrong decision could have been fatal.

When I visited New York, I usually worked on the 72nd floor of the North Tower (Tower 1). I had arrived in the city late on Monday night , September 10th. The next day a group of us from Bechtel and the Port Authority were going to attend Primavera's user conference in Philadelphia.

Going up the North Tower elevator I decided to spend some time responding to e-mails and then get ready by 10 a.m. when we were supposed to leave for Philadelphia. At 8:40 a.m. I remember I was on the phone leaving a message for one of the Port Authority division managers when the first plane hit our tower (North Tower) at about the 90th floor, I even remember saying "Oh my God we got hit . . . Oh my God we got hit!"in my phone message.

When the plane hit, it was nowhere near as dramatic as you would think on the 72nd floor, compared to the higher floors. There was a loud explosion and the building shook violently. There was a big flash of light. The really scary part was how much the building moved, and kept moving, for a long time before stabilizing. At the same time we saw out the window that flaming pieces of the building were flying past our floor window on their way down.

People on our floor were a little confused, not knowing to stay or evacuate. I heard some of the secretaries crying and hugging each other. The floor wardens with their red hats had not yet mobilized to give us instructions. They probably would have suggested we stay in the hall and wait for an announcement.

Not knowing what hit us, I didn't feel it was anything serious, so I went back to my desk to finish answering my e-mails. Next I noticed the smoke filling the floor and most of the people had already evacuated the floor. One of the Port Authority managers asked me what I was doing there and that I needed to leave immediately. I asked him if everybody had been evacuated. He told me he wasn't sure and if I wanted I could search the floor. So I started running on the floor and shouting ... "Everybody has to evacuate immediately!"By then it was only me and the manager left on the floor.

We moved toward the stairs to leave when we heard cries from the elevator. Four people were stuck in it. We tried to open the elevator door, but to no avail. I ran back to the office trying to find some tool to use as a lever. I found a heavy-duty stapler that we tried to use to pry the elevator door open. We tried for ten minutes and we could only open the door a few inches leaving the stapler between the doors so they could get some air, even though there was smoke in the air, but still it was better than the air in the elevator.

By now the floor was getting really hot and full of smoke, our eyes were burning. I was running back and forth to the men's room and bringing wet paper towel to put on our eyes and the eyes of the people in the elevator. By now my survival instincts were kicking in and I knew that we needed to leave. So I told my comrade in arm that we need to leave since we could not do anything for the people in the elevator except to let the firemen know. He told me I should leave since I have young kids. He was going to stay so he could tell the firemen about the people in the elevator.

I started my descent with my heart still with the people on the 72nd floor. The stairs were deserted. I started to get worried and thought I had stayed too long, not knowing the full danger of the moment. I was able to get to the 40th floor fairly easily. After that we were slowed up by people coming in from other floors. Some were crying, some were tired and not in good shape, but we all helped the weaker ones.

There were several times when two landings ahead of me were empty because I was helping a heavy woman named Michelle. She was having trouble with her knees. No one pushed past, no one yelled at us. Many had been in the last World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and they kept telling us what we were going through was much better than that time. The lights were on, the smoke was not so bad, the fire was on the floors above. We were going to make it out.

It wasn't until all the flow of traffic on the stairs stopped that people got panicky and started to yell. But then a stop-and-go pattern developed and we were calm again. I started to worry about my wife and kids. I wasn't ready to die yet. We started to hear that a plane had hit the building, and I wondered if it might not bounce into the other tower. I kept trying to dial my cell phone but it wouldn't work. No surprise.

We kept walking down the stairs. The smoke was getting thick. For a brief moment I thought we may get poisoned, that perhaps we were not yet safe. But that passed quickly too. Of course we were safe, we were near the ground (just 20 or so flights to go). We saw the first rescue worker coming up our stairway on the 17th floor. It slowed us down a little more, but we had all the time in the world, or so we thought.

When we were almost all the way down we came upon a floor that had water pouring out from under the door. This caused a waterfall the rest of the way down. There were several inches of water on the floor, but it was passable and did not slow us up much. We came out on the mezzanine level to the street level in the front of the building. It had taken us about 50 minutes to get down the stairs. There was probably less than a few minutes before the South Tower would collapse.

The plaza was filled with burning debris, but it did not look very bad—that is until you looked again. The sight of a heart stuck in its entirety against the mezzanine window got my attention. So I looked again at the plaza debris and all of a sudden I noticed a horrible scene of body parts and human organs, maimed bodies all over the plaza. Arms, legs, guts, half bodies, a site that I would never ever forget as long as I live. I kept thinking this can't be real, it's a movie. Oh how much I wanted it to be just that.

The lower level windows to West Street were completely blown out, but nothing looked bad out in the street. It was then; however, that the seriousness of the situation became apparent. The police had panic in their voice. They yelled at us with a real sense of urgency to move. When we came out of the stairwell the police asked us to walk in single file and do not run. After we got to the concourse level they were asking us to run. You very quickly realized you were not safe yet.

At the lower level they routed us through the basement mall. It was a surreal scene. It was completely empty except for a few rescue workers, the lights were out, the sprinklers were all going off and the floor was flooded. We ran down the corridor past the PATH [commuter] train, I saw the doors on the north side of the tower and the street there looked fine, but they were making us go a different way. That door was closer, but I decided to trust the police so I went up the escalator and out the door by the Borders bookstore at the northeast corner of the complex.

When we got outside they yelled for us to run, some stuff was on the ground and I realized that I could still be killed by falling debris. They kept yelling,"Don't look up!" but I couldn't help myself. I turned around to see the fate of the buildings. Both towers had been hit. I kind of froze looking up at the magnificent towers with fire and smoke bellowing out of them.

I still did not feel safe right at the base of the buildings where many had stopped to watch people throwing themselves from the building. I saw the looks of horror on the onlookers'faces and I knew I did not want to look back. I saw one policeman scream that another body was falling and then quickly turn his head away. There was nothing I wanted to see back in that building. Those were not images I could bear to imprint on my memory cells so they could haunt me for decades to come.

I moved fast, searching only for a free phone to call my wife and kids (my wife is in California and my kids are in upstate New York). At this time more debris started to fall from the South Tower along with loud crackling sounds. Somehow I knew that something bad was going to happen and I started to run for my life. That's when the South Tower started to fall.

I had somehow injured my left knee coming down the stairs and I couldn't run fast, but it was a matter of life and death. I wasn't going to let anything happen to me as long as I could help it. I was able to outrun the falling building but not the thick smoke. I remember running and kept looking back and seeing the smoke getting closer and closer until finally it engulfed us and turned the sunshine into darkness and horror. People began screaming and others in the street ran by the building (think of Godzilla movies).

The South Tower was the second to be hit and the first to fall. It had collapsed, imploding upon itself. Later I learned that the smoke was traveling at 50 miles an hour covering a two-mile radius. After the smoke got clear I found myself covered in what seemed like gray ash. Medics had set up a makeshift station to tend to the injured. I had difficulty breathing so I was given some oxygen and a mask and kept there for what seemed like an eternity.

Thinking back to that moment I do not remember hearing the sound of the building falling, the sound that people said was like a bomb exploding. All I remember was running away from smoke and then darkness and silence.

The Towers Were Gone!

Barton Gellman, a newspaper correspondent who has covered terrorism in Jerusalem and other parts of the Middle East, was working as a reporter for the Washington Post in New York City on September 11, 2001. He was unaware of the attacks against the World Trade Center just a few miles away from his office until his editor in Washington, D.C., called him. Gellman turned on his television in time to see the second plane fly into the South Tower. In the following story for the American Journalism Review, Gellman writes that he could not believe his eyes when the familiar Twin Towers were no longer a part of the city's skyline.

It was one of those incongruous calls of the satellite age: Distant editor rings local scribe to say, in effect, look out your window. My window is miles uptown and points the wrong way, but I tuned the television in time to see a jetliner pierce the skin of the World Trade Center's south tower. In that first telescopic picture, before the dramatic closeups to come, the aircraft looked small, almost insubstantial, against the facade.

The next few steps came by rote. I had been a correspondent in the Middle East through seven suicide bombings and many smaller attacks. Boots, jeans, cash. No notebook, damn. All right—index cards. Just before walking out:binoculars and flashlight. On the street, no taxi wanted to go downtown. The subway seemed too big a risk. What if it got stuck? Never trust your mobility to a contraption that can imprison you for hours. I used the old New York standby of waving a bunch of $20 bills at an unlicensed limousine and took the FDR Drive south as far as the driver would go. When he refused to weave into the side streets around City Hall, I started walking. A Harley-Davidson came motoring along, its huge bearded rider wearing a disposable yellow camera like a bauble. He let me link hands around his substantial mid-section, and we snaked through streets that were starting to fill with smoke.

When Harley Man began coughing, he stopped the bike and wished me luck. I walked on, doubling back when the streets were too thick with smoke and soot and circling to blocks that looked clearer. One short block, where the fire must have blazed but could not be seen, was so black at 10 a.m. that I actually used the Maglite to find my retreat.

It was an otherworldly landscape, heaped with drifts of ash and dust and papers by the tens of millions, smoldering and burning in piles. I pulled the T-shirt over my nose and mouth and cursed my failure to bring so much as a bandana. A guy in Haz-Mat gear looked at me sharply and told me I should know better than to walk toward the site; a police officer, disgusted at the proffer [offer] of a press card, offered to put me in the hospital if I did not turn around. In his heart-pounding zeal, I think he meant well.

I walked north for half a block and then cut west and doubled back. I could not quite get oriented: There was the north tower burning—the one with the television mast—but where was its twin? Was it the angle, or some obstruction? Unhappily I had no radio, something I never forgot when traveling overseas. Mobile circuits were jammed, of course, and my phone had accumulated so much dust that I thought I had better keep it covered anyway.

A few blocks north and east of the tower, I stopped next to a woman weeping as she goggled at the blazing gash in the tower's skin. And then everything got all mixed up in an almighty blow to the senses:a huge, low, rumbling, almost subsonic wave that resonated inside our bodies and filled our ears and seemed to go on a long time. I have felt only one thing at all like it before, while standing on a carrier flight deck for the launch of an F-14.

At the same time the smoky blaze of the tower became a boiling black cloud. And when the cloud began to clear a few seconds later, the tower was simply not there. GONE!! I wrote stupidly on an index card, underlining it three times. I could think of nothing else to write. In my shock I became aware that the woman next to me was screaming:"Oh, God, Oh, God, my niece works in that building! Oh, God."And as I recovered enough to help her sit down and to ask her name and the name of her niece, the next wave of the catastrophe arrived.

Two billion pounds of rubble were crashing down in the open esplanade around the World Trade Center, and the seething mass of ash and pulverized concrete struck the bottlenecks of lower Manhattan's adjacent canyons. Pressing outward and upward, the cloud rolled toward us, and we had to run. Stopping at Foley Square, outside the courthouse you see on "Law & Order,"I watched survivors stumble in. They had been much closer than I, and ashes filled their throats and ears and noses. They were ash people, undistinguishable by hair color or clothing. They plunged their heads and shoulders into the black marble fountain, retching. It felt like the end of the world we knew, and maybe the feeling was right.

Excerpted from "The Cloud Rolled Toward Us, and We Had to Run," by Barton Gellman, American Journalism Review, October 2001. Copyright © 2001 by American Journalism Review. Reprinted with permission.

Waiting for Patients

When emergency services were notified of the plane crashes at the World Trade Center, fire-fighters, police officers, and medical personnel rushed immediately to the towers to help in any way they could. Matthew Klam, a contributing writer for the New York Times, volunteered to help doctors and nurses care for the wounded. He describes the frustration they felt as they waited in vain for injured victims to appear.

We needed bodies. Without them, we were useless. And so we kept waiting, staring south toward the billowing smoke, anxiously tapping our feet, hoping the ambulances constantly pulling up with their sirens blaring had somebody inside we could help. They didn't.

We sat where a mobile hospital was being thrown together in the courtyard of the Salomon Smith Barney building at 388 Greenwich. We were set up in teams. Each of us had tape across our shirts identifying our names and any special qualifications, like "skilled electrician."

It was early afternoon on the day of the blast. I'd gotten past the police barricades by sticking close to my new friend, Mark, whom I met on 42nd and Sixth that morning. Mark is a former critical-care nurse who retired four years ago. I saw him standing in the street, berating a cop for not knowing how to ferry qualified caregivers like him to the scene. I told Mark I wanted to help too; when he flagged down a uniformed fireman in a blue Corolla, I got in back.

Downtown, Mark took charge immediately. He volunteered to oversee pediatric and adult critical triage. He explained to me that our makeshift hospital would be a "stabilization platform."Badly injured people would be brought here to be stabilized, then transferred to area hospitals.

That was the plan. But we had only two patients: two guys in business attire breathing from oxygen masks, nurses hovering above them. They soon got up and left.

In their wake, a TV crew from "20/20" arrived. Matthew Modine, the actor, arrived in jeans and T-shirt and a baseball hat, also looking for some way to volunteer. It was my weirdest celebrity sighting ever.

With alarm, Mark told me that we only had 10 or so IV bags, not enough stethoscopes, very few hypos or epinephrine." People are going to come here and die because we don't have this stuff,"he said angrily.

Yeah. It was horrible. Except we didn't have any people dying or ailing. After two hours, the greatest difficulty was too many volunteers. People began endless discussions about where, exactly, to stack body boards. Meanwhile, more ambulances pulled up with roaring sirens; each time, nobody was in the back.

Searching for Survivors at the Pentagon

Members of the armed forces at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., were watching live television coverage of the plane crashes into the World Trade Center towers when another hijacked plane hit the Pentagon. Colonel Robert J. Jenkins, a chaplain stationed in Korea, was attending a meeting at the Pentagon on September 11 when the plane hit the building. In the following account taken from his journal, Jenkins describes how survivors tried to rescue those who were trapped in the building, but that they were forced to abandon their attempts due to the heat and smoke.

September 11,2001, day one. All Command Chaplains serving Commander In Chiefs (CINCS) from around the world (ten of us) had just concluded morning devotions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) conference room in the Pentagon, had been given an overview for the week's annual Strategic Planning Conference conducted by the Joint Staff Chaplain and were on a ten-minute break when we were all called immediately back together to pray for the victims of the Trade Center attack now flashing on the briefing screen. Right after that prayer I was on the phone returning a call to my deputy command chaplain in Korea when I heard a very deep "boom."

Immediately everyone was exiting the conference room and franticly waving at me to follow. I hung up the phone and followed the orderly mass of people exiting the building. As we turned around we could see dark billowing rolls of smoke rising directly opposite from where we were. No one was panicking. No one was running. All of us were stunned in disbelief. We moved to the edge of the walkway and watched the smoke rise. Some were asking if it was a bomb. No one knew.

Word quickly passed through us that a plane had crashed into the other side of the building. The smoke was worse now. Suddenly security personnel began yelling at us to move off of the walkway and across the road to the river. Another plane was supposedly inbound for a second strike. No one seemed to panic, but anxiety obviously rose as folks now very quickly moved down the steps and across the road. I lost sight of my master sergeant, but I knew she got out ahead of me. In utter disbelief, I too moved to the road. An F-16 suddenly screamed by overhead and caused everyone to duck. Some uttered words that probably reflected what many others were at least thinking. A policeman said the aircraft had been identified as friendly. We were relieved.

Casualties began emerging toward us from inside the building. Some were walking on their own while others were being helped or carried. Voices were calling for anyone with medical experience to identify themselves. Chaplains were assisting the wounded. Some were holding IV bags in the air, others praying, comforting and encouraging those injured. I moved from victim to victim to offer support. Prayed with a few. Stayed with some till we could put them in a vehicle headed for a hospital. One black major was badly burned and his skin was hanging off his arm. It was a frenzy of activity.

They asked for volunteers to gather to try to go back into the building to bring out any more survivors. Time was of the essence. I stepped forward and was made leader of team 2. No one in that group was thinking of their own safety. We were now focused on getting our comrades out of there alive and to safety. With surgical masks and gloves on we quickly moved across the road and back into the building. We could see through the smoke, but the air was thick with fumes. It was hard to breathe, but we kept moving until we emerged into the courtyard and fresh air. Firefighters were trying to put out the spreading fire. No one yet knew the extent of damage or fire.

The volunteers were organized into search and rescue parties. I was now made team leader of team four. Each of us shook hands and introduced ourselves by our first names. A two-star general was on my team, but rank or service status wasn't even a thought among us. We were American volunteers focused on only one thing, i.e., getting our folks out of a burning building alive. I was asked by our team to pray before we went in. No one asked what "faith"I was. It didn't seem to matter. I was a chaplain and I prayed for us all. Soon a firefighter yelled for our team to follow him into the building. Though we could see through the smoke, the fumes were so strong that after about a hundred feet in we had to withdraw back out into the courtyard to wait. We exited coughing and moved toward better air.

The longer we waited the more we realized the chances of getting anyone else out alive were diminishing. The fire was spreading. We had no news. Some began using their cell phones to let their loved ones know they were okay. An agent let me use his to call Carol [Jenkins's wife]. I let her know I was okay. She said to me,"I believed in my heart that you were okay and, if you were, you would be ministering to those hurt."My own emotions began to rise and I couldn't talk more to her. I knew from my Viet Nam and Desert Shield & Storm experiences that I needed to keep my own emotions in check and my mind focused on the mission at hand. That mission to me was twofold: one, inspire those around me to hope and, two,

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to do what I could to help. I dismissed the thought of what if none of us here could get out of the courtyard alive. Me saying to those around me to "stay focused on our task" helped me to stay focused as well. It was about 3 PM now, the fire was still spreading and we were still waiting. Waiting was getting harder to do.

I went over to the folks responsible for setting up a temporary mortuary on the far side of the courtyard. They were anxious too. One soldier shared her concern about her son coming home and seeing that she wasn't there. I offered words of encouragement, support and prayer. They were all grateful and said so. I moved back to my group as we were now told that we were now going to have to move through the building to the blast side. Our anxiety rose.

A firefighter who knew the way led us back into the building. We could still see through smoke, but the fumes were worse. It was a very long and winding walk and I had no idea where in the Pentagon we now were, but we kept moving. At one point we had to turn around and go a different direction. Some voiced concern that we might be lost, but no one panicked. We stayed together and kept moving through the smoke. As we went by the Army Chief of Chaplains office I instinctively gave a thumbs up. I heard several behind me chokingly utter,"Hooah."I didn't look back. We kept moving. Breathing through the wet towel around my face helped a little, but when we finally emerged out the other side of the building I joined the others who were coughing out the smoke. It was awful.

Moving around to the side of the Pentagon we could now clearly see the impact area to the outside of the building. We were awestruck as we joined the thousands of other people looking on. No one could believe this was actually happening. Moving into place to wait to be called forth, folks shouted words of comfort and support to us. Bottles of water were passed our way. I saw some of my fellow chaplains and left my team for a few minutes to greet my brothers. They were as stunned as we were, but were already actively providing ministry all over the grounds. After about 30 minutes, 16 teams of 12 each volunteers moved into place to attempt to enter the building from the impact side to rescue any survivors. I was now leader of team 4. We were instructed to not lose sight of the buddy we were paired under any circumstances. I asked a blessing upon our team. We were ready. Emotions were high. It was now about 5 pm. Just before we were going to be led in, LTG [Lieutenant General] Van Alstyne came over and asked for the volunteer leaders to huddle around him. We did.

LTG Van Alstyne thanked us for volunteering and for what each of us was willing to do, but we were not going to now be needed. He said it was much too dangerous, we didn't have the proper safety equipment and enough search and rescue workers were now on the scene. He told us that probably no one else would be thanking us, but he thanked us for what we were willing to risk for others. He told us the Old Guard [a military search and rescue unit] was arriving to assume responsibility for the operation along with the other various agencies responsible. As we dispersed he recognized me and stopped to speak to me. It was good to see him in charge.

Now the Old Guard had the mission to bring out remains. It was no longer being considered a rescue operation. No one believed anyone could still be alive in the intense heat, smoke and toxic fumes. Still some were hopeful, praying. One young soldier told me his fiancee was on the phone talking to her friend and suddenly screamed and then the phone went dead. He said he believed she saw the plane just before it hit near the window of her office.... He said he knew she was dead, but he wanted to join the mortuary team and go in to help retrieve her body. I asked if she was a Christian and he said that she was and so was he. We talked about the eternal hope we Christians have in Christ and the resurrection yet to come. He was comforted and so was I....

I reported to the Chaplain's tent. The Military District of Washington (MDW) Command Chaplain was in charge of ministry operations on the grounds. He welcomed my help. I walked among the various types of workers—police, fire, rescue—offering words of support and encouragement. I was surprised at how many voiced their thanks and appreciation that chaplains were so visible and directly involved. As I visited the soldiers setting up mortuary affairs, I was asked to help and so agreed. A civilian there who had been a soldier in Korea said his girl-friend had been in the area of the blast. He didn't think she was alive, but he wanted to help bring her remains out. Understandable, but I knew that was not going to be permitted. An emotional reaction could jeopardize the safety of the whole team. We stood silently together still staring in disbelief at the burning building for a long time.

Teams were now formed to go into the building to remove bodies. There were four of us chaplains. After the FBI would photograph and tag the remains inside the building and indicate location found, the Old Guard soldiers would put the remains into body bags, two chaplains (Protestant and Catholic) would pray a blessing over the remains before they were carried out of the building to a refrigeration truck waiting with a medical team and chaplain inside. A doctor would pronounce death and, after that the remains would be escorted to a controlled FBI holding area at the end of the Pentagon. Respect for the dead and chain of custody were of paramount importance. I was designated the Protestant Chaplain and Chaplain Rick Spenser designated the Catholic Chaplain who would pray over the remains inside the building. Both of us could feel the weight of the responsibility, but both of us also found relief and strength through prayer and the knowledge that what we were doing for the living and the dead was necessary and a sacred honor.

Father Spenser and I hit it off instantly. I could sense in his demeanor a quiet confidence and see in his eyes deep spiritual strength. Neither of us knew what we were getting into, nor just how much we ourselves would need God's grace and strength in order to provide meaningful and effective ministry to those assembled around us. We walked among the soldiers listening, offering words of encouragement and hope, praying with some and silently praying for all and for each other. The fire continued to consume and nightfall was upon us when we were told there would be no entering the building tonight. After being told to report back at 0700 the next morning, Chaplain Spenser and I looked for something to eat as we headed to the MDW Chaplain operations tent.

It was now 2220 [10:20 p.m.] hours. I was exhausted and very aware of the intense pain in my left heel and in my right calf. I hadn't noticed I was limping till someone asked if I was okay. Someone else gave me a sandwich to eat and a bottle of water. I couldn't remember how many bottles of water I had already consumed, but I needed a few more. I kept my black sweater on all day because I didn't have all the stuff that goes on the military shirt. That made me sweat more, but also provided additional protection. Besides, I was in the military and was not about to appear disrespectful at a time like this.

I started walking toward my hotel (Sheraton National near the Marine Corps Barracks at Henderson Hall, about a mile), but the pain in my foot and leg wouldn't allow me to get very far. A policeman offered me a ride and I took it. Glad I did because up the hill I would have had to walk through hundreds of media folks spread across the hill. I thanked the officer and limped up the walkway. My Master Sergeant saw me and headed toward me. She hugged me and was so relieved to see me because she didn't know if I had made it out for sure. It was a touching moment, but I felt bad I had caused her so much additional worry. I told her to go ahead and drive with the Navy Chief back to South Carolina, but to be careful.

My room was as I had left it at 0700 in the morning. It had not been cleaned because the FBI locked down the top floors and put snipers on the roof. All the cleaning teams were confined to the first floor. Made sense. No one knew what was happening or what could happen next. What a day. I called the desk and they sent up some towels. I was a mess. Sunburned, dirty, exhausted and still stunned by the day's events. After a long hot shower, I listened to eleven voice messages on my room phone. I called Carol and told her I was okay, but continue to pray because we didn't know what tomorrow would bring. I couldn't talk more. It was midnight and I fell asleep.

Lucent Terrorism Library: America Under Attack: Primary Sources