Part II

sfs98ud99 · Wed, 12 Sep 2001 16:08:07 -0700

This morning, I got up, dressed, and headed down
to work. At the elevator to Courthouse station, the
woman I was riding with smiled and said "Good morning".
I took the Metro down from Rosslyn to Pentagon City
(which passed through Pentagon). As we approached
Pentagon, the car stopped and we smelled soot. I began
praying. Eventually, the car moved again. I got off at
Pentagon City and started walking to Pentagon. You could
still see smoke and smell it. One guy had an American
flag tie on. I waved off the news guy who wanted
reactions.

I was the first person in my office, so I booted up
my computer and sent an email to some friends
informing them that "The Good Guys Are Back In Business". I
then started answering phone calls. Do you have any
idea what it's like to hear people say that they're
glad to hear your voice? One person had called
yesterday asking me if I got his agreement in staffing - he
just called today to make sure that we were all alive
and choked up at the end. I had spoken to many people
in our office since the crash, and I knew that most
were alive. I was beyond glad that I was able to
convey this to people on the phone. I eventually sent
out an email to related people saying that our office
was ok. The most poignant was an email from my POC at
Treasury - she just sent an email that said "are you guys
ok?". I placed a call in to another contractor with two
people in our office to make sure that they were ok -
the answer was fortunately yes. I also answered one
email from a friend from high school and Georgetown who
had lost a brother in a dance hall blaze in 1991 -
she responded that, even though they were in Durham,
they all cared about us. I also checked the University
of Delaware's website, and got choked up from seeing
the numbers at the candlelight vigil.

Since my
work is based on interacting with other people, and
given the smell of smoke, I left relatively early. I
got back home without incident and went back on the
internet. I noticed the DoD press release that says that,
if people weren't killed by the impact, they would
have been killed by the fire. If I had been in the
section that was hit, I would have died. That struck me.