By noon, our lives were changed forever. The terror had struck in three states, and the D.C. workforce felt like the next target. Rumors spread about car bombs throughout the city and more planes heading our way. With Metro closed and employees fleeing, the city turned into a mass of people - stunned, scared, mostly silent. Many were trying to locate loved ones. Most heard good news. We could tell who may not have - they sat on sidewalks crying.
Now that five years have passed, that day feels like a part of history. But it also feels very much like yesterday. Everyone had their lives disrupted - some a little, some a lot, some forever. No matter where you fall on that spectrum, let's all take a moment and remember that second you heard the news and the heroes we lost and gained on that day.
Just about everyone I knew gave blood. What I remember for myself is a helpless kind of fear. We had several bomb threats in my workplace over the next year, and people tried to be nonchalant. We made plans about where to meet. We tried to work in libraries of other buildings. We had yellow cards about how to respond to a bomb threat call because one of our coworkers did receive one.
Then someone innocently left a backpack in the women's restroom and I called campus police. Once waiting to cross at a stoplight I put down my own pack, and a young woman started running away in a brief but very real moment of panic. A powdery white substance somewhere on ground was later determined to be chalk dust and an innocent event.
Fear. Nothing but. Fear when a small aircraft flew over. But then came the generalized anger. Posters of Osama Bin Laden - Dead or Alive were in service station windows. My office mate was Turkish and his wife was afraid to go to the grocery store. Then she went home for a visit with their children and she was not permitted to come back.
People were saying towel heads all the time.
Then we couldn't get flu shots.
I am far removed from the actual events of 9/11 and did not know anyone who perished, but yes, my life changed forever.
A short time later a coworker was screaming in the hall that a bomb had just gone off at the Pentagon, as we had other colleagues that work in and around the Pentagon (my office is in Tyson's Corner) we began frantically making calls to check on their safety (all of our coworkers were safe but I later learned of an old acquaintance that had been slightly injured).
I then began calling friends that worked downtown (by this time there were rumors of bombs going off in downtown DC and a plane circling). We have two sets of friends that had one spouse working in DC (one two blocks from the White House and one at the Navy Yard) and one at home, in both of these cases I was able to reach both friends downtown but their spouses could not (the phone lines were very busy) so I had to shuttle messages back and forth that they were OK (the Metro had shut down and all of DC was gridlock). My friend at the Navy Yard told me that they were under full lockdown and MP's with M16's were ordering everyone inside (no one could enter or leave).
Over the next few days we would hear the stories from friends. One friend who works at the Navy Annex next to the Pentagon told us how the building shook when the Jet flew over (the Annex is located on a hill at the edge of Arlington National Cemetery just above where the Pentagon was hit).
I also remember how eerily quite the skies were for the next few days with no air traffic (we live close to Dulles Airport and on a clear night you can usually see planes lined up on approach for landing).