Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 5

WEDNESDAY SECTION 1 CHICAGO TRIBUNE U.S. UNDER ATTACK IN WASHINGTON, D.C. Trade day' pits mark capital. SEPTEMBER 12, 2001 A mi i i fly' MP I Survivors recall horror of attack on the Pentagon By Jeff Zeleny and Evan Osnos Washington Bureau WASHINGTON As darkness fell Tuesday on the nation's capital, smoke still smoldered from the roof of the ripped-open Pentagon nearby while a shuttered and eerily silent city groped to recover and understand. In a city of gleaming, ghostly monuments to the fallen, this blackened structure, too, had now become a tomb.

As part of an apparently coordinated terrorist attack that included the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York by two hijacked airliners, a plane hijacked from nearby Dulles International Airport slammed into the Pentagon's western wall at 9:45 a.m. Tuesday. The American Airlines jetliner, flying so fast and low that it snapped a nearby light pole, tore a five-story hole into the nation's military command center and killed what officials feared could be hundreds of people on the ground and in the plane. So devastating was the damage that by 4:30 p.m., the FBI had declared the sprawling grounds of the Pentagon a crime scene, and rescuers all but abandoned hope of saving those who might still be inside. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, picking his way Tuesday afternoon across a manicured lawn littered with a crushed airplane seat and other charred chunks of wreckage, with a three-star general carrying a folded American flag, could say only this: "There's no question it's a tragic day." Like many of the 23,000 people who work in the massive Pentagon structure, Charles Lewis i I.

nit 4 ryfSr i A AP photo by Steve Helber Firefighters hose down the twisted, smoldering remnants of one side of the Pentagon, which was damaged when a hijacked aircraft scored a direct hit on Tuesday. .1 rr ri 1 i A aj -i 'i VL t- Xy-. It i jt.1i knew first that something terrible had happened in New York. Watching the World Trade Center attack on television, Lewis, 30, was frantically trying to call his mother, who works in one of the Manhattan buildings, when his own office in the Pentagon's command center exploded. Someone, he said, pulled him through a hole in the wall to safety.

"I couldn't see anybody else inside. I was thrown up against the wall," Lewis, a civilian employee, said as he limped along the grass outside the Pentagon, his white trousers stained by blood. Hardly any of the workers who streamed from the Pentagon in those first few minutes ran or cried or screamed. They are too rigorously trained in evacuations for that. But inside, pandemonium erupted.

Cabinets fell from walls. Curtains collapsed. People found themselves trapped behind locked stairway doors. "It was like the building was caving in," said computer technician Josh Levesque, 23, who with scores of other workers managed to escape from stairways when they opened minutes later. As plumes of smoke spiraled into the sky, streets jammed with people and cars.

The city's government buildings, museums and monuments shut down. There were rumors of a bomb going off on the National Mall, a car bomb outside the State Department, a second plane headed for the Pentagon. None of it was true but, as people learned soon enough, the truth was awful enough. On four lanes of Virginia Route 110 near the Pentagon, normally a bustling thoroughfare into Washington, hundreds of military officials, civilian employees and volunteers waited hours in the baking sun Tuesday to help in the rescue effort. They pitched tents on the road and set up a makeshift pharmacy.

Dozens of stretchers were strewn along the road's shoulder. Doctors, in green scrubs, in military uniforms and in suit coats, converged on the area. They waited and they waited, but no patients came. Instead, as the afternoon progressed, the volunteers could only watch the Pentagon in horror, as the fire, fed by gallons of jet fuel that splashed into the building upon the plane's impact, spewed flames into the sky. The blaze was so intense that rescuers couldn't reach the heart of the crash site, nestled deep within the complex.

Watching from a nearby hotel, which served as a temporary shelter for some the workers i WV; I r. "-sy J'" i AP photo by Evan Vuccl A Secret Service agent, armed with a shotgun, looks skyward while patrolling an area near the White House on Tuesday. pond on the Mall. Gale Griffin, 44, a consultant, rode her bicycle to Capitol Hill and looked down upon the National Mall, which sat bright and green and empty in the late-afternoon sun. "It's just this clear, beautiful patch of grass in front of the Washington Monument," she said.

"It's one of the most beautiful views of Washington I've seen, and I've been here 14 years. "It's just so beautiful today and yet it's a horrendous day." Tribune reporters Louise Kier-nan, Mike Doming and Frank James contributed to this report. and told them to go home. Altogether, at least 28 people were taken to hospitals in Washington, while at least 37 more were treated at Virginia Hospital Center-Arlington. Eighteen of those patients were discharged, and eight remained in intensive care Tuesday night.

At least six of the 37 injured people are firefighters and emergency medical workers. None of the hospitals reported any fatalities, officials said. By rush hour, the streets downtown were deserted, save for a handful of tourists and joggers, and so quiet that passersby could hear geese honking on a Roanoke Times photo by Sam DeanAP Hollins University students comfort each other at a prayer service at the campus in Roanoke, Va. military officials on the scene gathered the volunteers together. In a tight huddle, they thanked them foitheir service "I still have the taste of jet fuel in my mouth," he said.

Finally, nearly eight hours after thtfirst reports of the crash, who escaped from the Pentagon, Navy public affairs officer Michael Stainbrook watched the blaSe in awe and anger..