I was in Washington, DC when the terrorists struck. Here are my experiences and thoughts.
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Click here for reports from Friday, September 14th to Wednesday, September 19thI went to a couple of Senate hearings. But most hearings were postponed. I went to the Senate Judiciary Committee "markup" hearing for the budget "authorization" bill. There were a few comments about recent events, but also some non-partisan (i.e., purely money-related) bickering. In other words, Congress is getting back to business as usual.
I also went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the nomination of John Negroponte to be Ambassador to the U.N. He's an intelligent, competent, career diplomat, but the squabbling here was over his tenure in the early eighties in Honduras and whether he participated in suppressing reports of human rights violations by the Honduran government (which, of course, he denies). The actual highlight of the hearing was a protester standing up in the hearing room and basically accusing him of lying. The protestor had done missionary work in Honduras as that same time. The guard "escorted" the protester out of the hearing room. He was talking with reporters in the hallway while the guards were waiting for instructions about what to do with him. They ultimately just casually escorted him to the front door. He seemed very intelligent and knowledgeable. A big point of contention in the hearing was whether the violations in Honduras were actually "death squads" in the same way as they were in Guatemala. The protester and the nominee were dealing with the same "facts", but had different "interpretations". Business as usual.
I walked along the mall in the early afternoon. Not too many people out, but not a ghost town either. I stopped at the Air & Space Museum and the Holocaust Museum. Then I walked along the street the goes in between the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. I didn't see any smoke from the Pentagon at that time. I walked on the street between the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument and then over around the ellipse and then up along the narrow park along the fence on the East side of the White House. Everything was rather calm and idyllic.
I crossed Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House over to Lafayette Park. Then things got interesting. Just seconds later there were some police sirens with a bunch of vehicles that went past the main Treasury building (next to the White House) and then the guards at the Park told everyone to quickly walking directly across the park (North) to H Street. This was about 3:00 p.m. Shortly later they put up the yellow "Police Line" tape all along H Street (the North side of Lafayette Park). Occasionally photographers, reporters, and TV cameramen would show up for a little while and then move on. Nobody had a clue what was going on. I just assumed they decided (for whatever reason) that they would be more comfortable with a larger perimeter area. A police helicopter was circling overhead for quite a while. I hung around across the street from the Hay Adams Hotel for a while, but nothing really happened. Other than the police yelling at people (especially reporters) when they tried to cross the street to get to the park. Oh, and the police frisked a guy leaning on a mail box and searched through his backpack. I guess he looked "suspicious". Later I found out that there had been a bomb scare and evacuation at the Capital, but that was closer to 6:00 p.m.
There was plenty of rush-hour traffic, made worse since some streets were close for "security". There were still a few (just a few) National Guard soldiers with their HumVees at some intersections.
In the evening, I had dinner at Olives (three blocks North of the White House). The restaurant was fairly busy. The table next to me was a group of tourists from London. The table on the other side was a couple of bankers. You could not sense any "heightened anxiety". It was business as usual in Washington. The "backdrop" has changed, but life goes on.
After dinner, I walked down to the Lafayette Park area. They had H Street shutdown and a few other blocks in the area. I saw a TV cameraman and his soundman down the street and wandered over to talk to them. They weren't doing much more than recording the police helicopter flying overhead. I hung out there for a while and a couple of other people came and went. I was sitting off to the side, taking some notes. Eventually, one of the police officers came over and checked the ids of the cameraman and the soundman, but not mine.
Overall, things are still very calm, just a little more tenseness. Procedures are gradually being tuned and either expanded or reduced.
Here's the view through the "Wintergarden" atrium of the World Financial Center which is directly across the street from the WTC "site". Looking up through the palm trees, through the glass atrium roof you could see the tops of the towers. I used to stop there, late in the afternoon, on my Saturday walk through lower Manhattan, where the fireman in the middle of the picture is, to look up at the towers. The last time I did was on Saturday, August 25th. That was the last time I ever saw the towers.
The bright area in the background below the middle of the picture is looking up the marble steps to what was the enclosed pedestrian bridge leading across the highway to the south side of the north tower. I presume that the glass of the atrium is all blown out, but see how the palm trees survived. They should try to save them. The floor is marble too.
There is glass wall behind the photographer and a plaza and harbor behind that. Behind the photographer's left shoulder (maybe 500 feet), on the edge of the harbor and river is where the NY Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is located. That's where most of the major commodities like gold and oil (NYMEX) are traded. The traditional commodities were traded over in the WTC. I wonder if it was far enough away to survive. There are two WFC buildings between "The Merc" and the WTC, so it's possible. But then there's the question of the utilities and physical access to the building.
I still have not been able to find out at what angle the first plane hit the WTC.
Today was semi-normal. Nothing bad happening, just a little less traffic. I went to a congressional hearing (on protection of critical government infrastructure). All the other hearings were cancelled. Congress was in
session, but the Capital building was closed to "tourists". Some of the museums were open again. You could walk around the White House area again. Restaurants were open again. People still talking about the details of the events, but things are rather calm. Nobody is in a panic. Nobody seems worried about another event. Congress is "talking tough". I saw some National Guard MPs on a couple of corners, but not many. The area may still be technically declared a disaster area, but if you didn't know what happened, you wouldn't think that anything had happened.The World Trade Center area must be, well, truly unimaginable. I've seen
pictures, but the reality must be far more intense. There are people
trapped in the basement who have cell phones, but the authorities say it
could take WEEKS to clear the rubble. Here is a PERFECT application of
small robots to dig in there to take them food and water. (Is this an
opportunity for an SBIR grant??) Any large scale movement of rubble could
just cause the remaining rubble to go tumbling down on those people. But
maybe it's work it, since otherwise they would die.
In case anybody is interested what it's like down here...
I'm here down in Washington, DC now. It's calm in a strange kind of way. Everybody talking about the details of the crashes, but there weren't that many hurt at the Pentagon compared to NYC. People get very philosophical about what should be done. Nobody has a clear answer. Every "solution" has drawbacks. Some say this is definitely Bin Laden's work. Others say that Bin Laden is doing this (as well as previous terrorist acts) in conspiracy with Iraq. And then there's the issue of Afghanistan's "harboring" of Bin Laden. People in Washington are focused on this kind of stuff compared to the sheer damage and loss of life in New York.
I was on the internet early but signed off right at 8:45, so I just missed the news. About 9:15 I left my apartment when is six blocks north of the White House and was on my way to a Senate hearing when I saw the Pentagon smoke just a few minutes before 10 am when I was near Union Station, but I didn't hear any explosion so I figured it must be a large fire and not a bomb. Other than that smoke, I saw no signs of anything wrong.
A lot of people were leaving the Senate office buildings, but they hadn't started a formal evacuation yet, as of 10:00 am. I asked the guard at the building just after 10 am and he shrugged his shoulders and said they weren't evactuating and people were just leaving by their own choice. I went to the hearing (Senate Banking hearing on the failure of the Superior Bank in Illinois held in the Dirksen office building), which was packed, and it started about 10:05. Senater Sarbanes said he wasn't goto to let "them" shut down his hearing. The hearing went for about 15 minutes before the guard informed us that we had to evacuate.
Some of us sitting near the windows had heard a distant boom around 10:11 am. I ran into somebody later who said it was a sonic boom from a jet fighter. I saw one fighter once and could hear them on occasion, but could not see them. The sky was fairly clear with just a few clouds. Lots of helicopters coming and going to the Pentagon.
I listened to some reporters interviewing Senators out in the park across the street. But the reporters couldn't call in their quotes because their cell phones wouldn't work due to too many people using their phones. I stayed there a little while. Some people had their car radios on so we could listen to the news. I actually didn't know what had happened until after the hearing started. I just knew that "something" had happened over near the river. One of the Senators being interviewed has Senator Levin who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and who will be involved at the center of the investigation of what happened and whatever response occurs.
Then I and then walked down to the river where we could see the smoke still billowing from the Pentagon. They had all the monuments roped off, but I was able to walk across the bridge and could see the Pentagon from fairly close. Close enough to smell the smoke. They weren't really stopping people from moving around. A while later I got close enough to the far side to see where the damage was. The gash in the side of the building was not that big, at least looking at it from a very oblique angle, but we could not see straight in at the bulk of the damage. They were still fighting the fire late in the day. The building is solid concrete, but the roof is wood and tar and just very difficult to put out. Eventually we could see workers atop the roof right at the gash.
I was able to talk to some people who were in the Pentagon at the time. On woman was watching the news of the NY crash and one of her co-workers said "Well, at least they didn't hit the Pentagon" and then ten minutes later they did. They evacuated and the police kept moving them further from the building. At one point the police cars roared up with their PA system warning that "A hijacked plane is incoming". Whether that was the Pittsburgh plane or just a too-late warning about the first plane wasn't clear. At that point people ran and tried to get behind a stone wall (the entrance to the LBJ Memorial Grove). People calmed down and walked over the Crystal City, not more than a mile away. Most did not come back and the parking lot was half full even at the end of the day. The woman I talked to had come back for her car and was very calm about the whole thing.
Just about everybody I ran into was fairly calm about the whole thing. But the damage in DC is far less than in NY. At dinner I was talking to a guy from NY who lives not far from the Trade Center whose wife had gone out for coffee with a friend and looked up just in time to see the collapse. Her friend's husband worked in the Trade Center. This guy knows somebody who worked on the 40th floor and made it out, so not everyone died. That's so much more different than DC where maybe only 100 or less (besides the plane passengers) died. Nobody has the numbers for sure yet.
I heard one police officer say that they had too many volunteers and had sent a lot of them home. There was a virtual parking lot full of emergency vehicles of every sort at the Pentagon. But they only had three water canons going.
I was over at the Pentagon until 7:30 pm. I could hear that the Metro train was running again near the Pentagon. Some highways near the Pentagon were closed, but not all. There were a moderate number of cars on the road. I walked along the river and crossed over to the Lincoln Memorial. All the memorials were completely lit, but roped off. I had to detour around the White House area since a whole bunch of blocks were closed.
Virtually all restaurants were closed, except those in hotels and they required that you be a guest. But I got into the Marriott Courtyard across the street from my apartment and had dinner. I just got back to my apartment around 10:30 and still had not seen any TV news (I don't have a TV either). Luckily the internet is working fine right now. I still haven't seen any pictures of the World Trade Center, but I know from personal experience what the Pentagon looked like. One officer at the Pentagon checkpoint said he had been at the site earlier and he saw no large pieces lying around, but I think they're all inside the building.
People are just waiting for the President to decide what he's going to do. Downtown DC will probably be back to work within a couple days since there's no damage over here. Ironically, the section of the Pentagon which was hit was the part that was just renovated. But that meant that not everyone had moved back into their offices and many people were away at meetings.
There's a state of emergency of some sort here in DC, but no curfew or restrictions other than the fact that most people just went home, so most businesses other than hotels are closed. The police stationed throughout the city are all pretty casual about everything.
The Metro subway train was closed early on, but eventually opened except for the lines that ran past the Pentagon. But I think everything was eventually open.
There was a lot of confusion with traffic because they told everybody to "go home" all at once. That was a mistake. They should have told people to take their time and enjoy the weather in the park areas and the malls. I wouldn't have wanted to be in a car driving past some government building that might be attacked.
Strangely, it didn't feel uncomfortable in the Senate office building. In fact, when they told us to evacuate, people just sat there for a couple of minutes, even through they all knew what had happened. That's the kind of people you get in Washington -- nobody wanted to give up their seat in a packed hearing! In fact, the chair I took was actually the CSPAN cameraman's chair. I figured I'd sit there until he got back, back he never came back. The camera was on auto-pilot.
That's the way it was on Tuesday. Tomorrow's a different story.
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Updated: January 30, 2006 08:37:57 PM -0500
Copyright © 2001 John W. Krupansky d/b/a Base Technology