My September 11, 2001: Part 2

Continued from Part 1

September 11, 2008 - Part 2

When I walked in the office on the sixth floor, the front conference room had the TV on. A couple of staff members were standing in front. This wasn't too out of the ordinary. I was going to need the room within the hour, though, so I went in to make sure I still had it.

A coworker immediately alerted me to what was going on: "A 747 crashed into the World Trade Center!"

"Wha?"

It was at that moment as I glanced at the screen that I saw the second plane enter the frame and slam into the top of the building.

It was shocking, but like much of the rest of the country, we quickly knew we were no longer dealing with an insane accident, but an insane attack.

We watched in near silence as the news blathered on the same little information they knew. A few minutes more of this and then I hear the receptionist talking on the phone with her friend.

"There's smoke there?"

"Don't go there!"

"Just get out of that area!"

It's the Pentagon. There's been an explosion at the Pentagon and it's on fire. A few minutes later the news that a plane has hit the Pentagon is broadcast on the television.

I hurry over to my desk and call my wife at work.

Her office is a few blocks north of the White House, near Dupont Circle. We agree that I'll walk the two miles to her work, and then figure out where to go next. As I'm getting off the phone there is a huge BOOM! in the direction of the Capitol. There's the partially constructed office building between us and the Capitol. We don't know if something happened at the Capitol or if some big piece of construction fell. Our attempts to figure it out by peering out the window fail.

The TV alerts us to a report of an explosion near the State Department building in Foggy Bottom. As we are just one block from the Capitol building which may or may not have been attacked, everyone is told to leave the building and we spill out on to the streets.

It is amazing that the air I was in a half and hour ago could feel so different. It was still sunny and mild, but the air felt thick with all the tension and anxiety exuding from the people.

Everyone else in the middle part of DC were doing the same thing. Getting out. The roads were choking with cars. Most people were being remarkably civil under the stressful circumstances, but you did have a few folks honking and aggressively pushing their cars in front of others. The cars of course were going no where. It seemed to me that people would have been better off walking all the way to Bethesda or wherever else instead of driving. I never even considered getting on the Metro as being stuck underground in a crowded train during a terrorist attack held little appeal.

I was walking up Massachusetts Avenue, which is embassy row. I saw confused embassy staff wandering outside debating what to do. I saw other embassies on high alert, ushering people in or out (as each country had widely differing protocols for embassy security) and hurriedly locking up the gates.

I stopped at an ATM and took out $100 as a precaution. An hour later all the ATMs I saw were out of cash. I arrived at my wife's workplace. She wasn't there, but some of her colleagues were. They had been told to evacuate, but some had ignored it and stayed to watch the TV. Most of those who stayed appeared to be people who had friends and family who worked in or near the World Trade Center. I met my wife's boss for the first and last time, oddly being sure to thank her for the thoughtful wedding present she had given us (an excellent kitchen knife I still use to cut tomatoes). I learn my wife had left with a colleague to her place in Colombia Heights. I get the address, say an awkward goodbye, and walk north.

As I walk further from the center of DC, the hoards on the street begin to thin out. Soon I'm on a residential block that for all appearances makes it feel like a normal day. Few people are on the sidewalk. The only sound I hear are chirping birds. I think I relax a little for the first time in a couple hours.

Indeed my wife and a couple other friends and coworkers are stationed at the house, glued to the set. We commence to stare at it in shock.

One says, "I have a friend who has been working in one of the towers. She would have been there early today to monitor the primary election results."

Another, "The planes hit after most people would have been at work. There must be 10,000 people in those buildings..."

Eventually we get hungry and buy some pasta at the corner store at the end of the block which is open for business like just any other day. I find this strange, but don't know why, so I just pay the clerk without much conversation.

I finally can use my cell phone to call my mom and tell her I'm OK, even though by this time the news stations have it straight that "only" the World Trade towers, the Pentagon, and a portion of rural Pennsylvania have been hit. I don't know how quickly they figured out there were no attacks on the Mall or the State Department. Even my paranoid mother knows the likelihood of a peacenik like me randomly being in the Pentagon that day was utterly slim.

In the late afternoon, it appears safe to go on home to our basement apartment on Capitol Hill. Suddenly, living two blocks from the Capitol and Supreme Court isn't all that appealing.

We walk through a nearly empty downtown. Already military vehicles and personnel are out, blocking certain segments of the city. We walk past a downtown restaurant which is oddly open. It has a few patrons and a few staff and we go in and have an almost completely silent dinner.

As we approach the Capitol, we keep a two block radius to avoid any security blockades. Several military helicopters swoop overhead to the Capitol. We turn on the TV once we get in the apartment to learn it was Congressional leaders returning for their press conference and rendition of "God Bless America" on the back steps of the Capitol building.

The next day we arise, tired and disorientated. Outside our apartment building is a man in fatigues with a big gun. He and others continue to guard our intersection 24 hours a day for the next several months.

I get to work. Everyone else is shellshocked and unable to concentrate. We mingle in small groups talking about our previous day and what this all means and whether the US should make war on Arabs and what exactly is the difference between Afghanis and Arabs and who was Al Qaeda. At 10:00 I get a call from one of the staffers I was suppose to see the previous day.

"We gotta come in there right away for our meeting. Will you be ready for us in a half hour? We were unable to make it yesterday for some reason. HA! HA! I know there's a war on or something, but we need to get this redistricting plan squared away. Can you be ready for my boss in a half hour?"

I'm disgusted. My boss is disgusted. Everyone in the office is disgusted. We are all people who work nonstop for partisan advantage and yet we are sickened by the blatant partisanship displayed by this Member of Congress and his staff on September 12, 2001. (Later, I get a little bit of pleasure when the congressman was one of those depicted flirting with young interns days after September 11 in a controversial article in the December issue of Vanity Fair.)

After this phone call I began questioning just how long I wanted to stay in that city.

Over the following weeks and months, a war was started. DC was overrun with security measures, with concrete barriers, guards, and military vehicles everywhere. Then the anthrax scare happened. I remember uneasily walking past the wrapped up Hart Office Building. Every day our receptionist opened the mail with gloves on.

Washington, DC had lost a lot of the appeal it had when we first moved there June of 2000.

One year later, on September 15, 2002, we closed on our new house in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis and have been there ever since.