Once we got outside, many of us broke into a dead sprint to get to the other side of the Pentagon to see who else we could pull out of the building. We didn’t know the first responders were already there all we knew was that a large number of people were hurt. We could hear them yelling and moaning, but we couldn’t get to them because of the fire. It was chaos. And we didn’t think it was over.
Is the same thing going on at the White House? My mind raced. What other facilities have been attacked? What about my family? If these people are doing this to innocent people on airplanes, they could be setting down nuclear weapons right where my family is.
Nobody could reach anybody. Most of the phone circuits were overloaded, even for cell phones. My oldest daughter saw the news in her high school classroom and thought for sure I was dead. It was two to three hours before I was able to connect with my family.
An hour later, we were told there was another plane inbound Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. So they had us all scurry away and take cover under the overpass on Interstate 395 for awhile. Every couple minutes, F-16s flew about fifty feet over the Pentagon.
Finally somebody told everyone to go home, watch the news, and be ready to report back to work tomorrow. Nobody could get in and out of the parking lot, so fifteen thousand of us walked on the shoulders of I-395. Many cars coming out of Washington pulled over and offered rides.
The fellow who helped me evacuate our office and I were picked up by two guys. When Dan Rather said something on the radio about “crazy Islamic fundamentalists,” these two guys started yelling at the radio in Arabic, pounding on the dashboard, swearing out the window.
What in the world did we get ourselves into? we thought. We quickly jumped out of the car in the slow-moving traffic and walked to a subway station. Two hours after I had left the Pentagon, I finally made it home.
Lord, when things don’t make sense, help me keep my focus on you.
“When I am afraid, I will trust in you.” (Psalm 56:3)