Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource September 11 Digital Archive Stories Description An account of the resource This collection is the bulk of the archive, representing the reactions and experiences of thousands of individuals beginning in 2002. 911DA Story 911DA Story: Story Tell us about what you did, saw, or heard on September 11th. Feel free to write as much or as little as you like. Tell us your story: My September 11, 2001 Story Kirk Foster On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, I had to do another day of my 2-week annual tour as an Air Force Reservist. So I left our home in Springfield, Virginia, and made my way to the Pentagon. From the Pentagon, I would take a charter bus shuttle to my reserve office in Rosslyn, Virginia, which is an office building community up the road, past Arlington National Cemetery. I got on the bus at its usual place outside the south side of the Pentagon, near Corridor One. As usual, my Pentagon ID pass from my old job in the Pentagon got me on Although I finished my job in the Pentagon in June 2000, the Air Force never took away my Pentagon ID. It didn't expire until July 2002, so I just used it as a form of ID to get on the bus. The bus was one of those nice, air-conditioned charter buses with good seats, so I closed my eyes and tried to take a catnap in my seat, which was a window seat on the right side. I remember thinking it was too early and I didn't want to be there. The bus soon began its route to Rosslyn. It passed around the west side of the Pentagon, about 50 yards from the helicopter pad. I recall the time was 7:45 AM. At about 9:10 AM, I was at my computer terminal in my Rosslyn office building and checked my e-mail. There was a brand new e-mail from the division secretary, Ms. Brenda Germany, saying a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center..."the top half just exploded." I figured it was a horrible accident. A few minutes later, I got up to go to the bathroom. In the hall, I met Lt Col Bruce Lennard who said "Did you hear what happened?" I said no, and he said both World Trade Center Towers had just been hit in a terrorist attack. "It's on TV in the Conference Room," he said. I recall saying "no, you gotta be joking." So I went into the division conference room and saw everyone gathered around the TV. One of the major networks was on, and it showed the second tower being hit. I also recall it showed the billowing smoke pouring from the buildings, both up close and from a long-distance shot. I figured now was a great time to go get a cup of coffee down the street and think about this. As I left the coffee shop at about 9:40, I saw dozens of Air Force personnel, and dozens of other people, streaming out of the office building across from mine. I figured big conference had just finished, and people were getting back to their jobs. I continued back into my building (1501 Wilson Blvd) and returned to my office up on the 7th floor. There, I found Earl the paralegal looking at the internet on his computer. The internet said the Pentagon had just been bombed. Everyone was ashen faced; Earl said he'd been able to see black smoke billowing up from the direction of the Pentagon a few moments ago. I went to the window and saw a large cloud of yellowish white smoke coming from the area of the Pentagon, about a mile and a half away. You couldn't actually see the Pentagon. Everyone in my office was walking around, trying to get any information available. There wasn't panic, but real concern. Between 10 and 10:30, I recall, Doretha the secretary said my wife Shirley was on the line. Doretha transferred the call into my office. Shirley told me the World Trade Center had just collapsed. No, I told her, that can't be right. She said they're showing it on the TV. Shirley wanted to know if I was coming home now, or what the plan was for us in the office, and I told her I didn't know either. By this time some of the phone lines were jammed, and so were some of the internet sites. So I told Shirley to call me back at around 11:00. I went back to the TV in the conference room and saw the collapse on TV, too. There's no way people can breathe in that cloud of dust and smoke, I thought. People in the room were thinking tens of thousands of casualties, because the TV talked about 50,000 people are in the towers on a business day. The fire chief of Arlington County, where the Pentagon is, already was being reported as saying 800 were dead in the Pentagon. That dumb-assed remark - with no proof - made the panic worse for a lot of people. When I went back to my office, I turned on the radio and heard that several airliners up in the air were unaccounted for. That was when I felt scared. For the first time, I realized that people in tall buildings were being killed, that hundreds of military personnel nearby had just been killed by a rogue airliner, and that another one might be on the way to the DC area. I looked out the window and still saw military personnel streaming out of buildings. About two stories beneath my window, on the plaza level of my building, was a large shrub in a big pot, so I figured that if on the bizarre chance my office did get whacked, I could jump on that shrub and maybe just break my legs or something. From my office, there was a Shirley called again, and I recall putting her on speaker phone so that everyone could hear the latest. The chief of our entire Directorate, Colonel David Thomas, had come by earlier saying he had received no instructions on what we were supposed to do or go, but that he would let us know if he did. He had three floors of Air Force personnel, spread out from the seventh to ninth floors. We waited for another 5 hours or so. I recall the phones hardly rang. As I looked out the window, very few people were on the street. At 3:00, Major Chris Van Natta said we'd been given the go-home signal. But the shuttle bus and the metro was shut down, the roads near the Pentagon were closed, and I-395 (going past the Pentagon) was jammed solid. Luckily, his carpool was going to my town of Springfield, and he gave me and two others a ride. We headed west, as all the roads to the east were closed. There were police directing traffic at all the major intersections in the area. I got home at about 5:00. When I got home, Shirley told me that our old neighbor from Mississippi, Katie Swanson, called her that morning, told Shirley four rogue airliners were heading to Washington DC to kill everyone, and that she (Katie) was sorry. That's how Shirley got wind of the big picture. Prior to that, she was up at Caroline and Alex's school when a teacher came in and said "your husband works at the Pentagon, right?" Shirley said no but got word from this lady that the Pentagon had just had an airliner hit it. Shirley was told not to turn on the TV for the kids, as they were trying not to scare the children. By the end of the day, the school had issued a letter talking about how to deal with the attack with your children, and what the school could do to help. Aftermath Thursday, September 13: Still on reserve duty, I caught ride with a man driving to the Pentagon that morning. The traffic was backed up pretty good, and as we rounded the crest of the highway I could see why. The blackened gash in the west side of the Pentagon was clearly visible, and there seemed to be a small city of tents, construction equipment, and lights next to the impact site. It was pretty creepy. The guy giving me a ride calmly remarked that he climbed out from his west side, fifth floor office at the Pentagon on his hands and knees. That's the side the jet hit. All the usual bus sites around the Pentagon had been quickly relocated across the interstate to a office tower community known as Pentagon City, about a quarter mile away. He dropped me off there, and it took about another hour to get to Rosslyn about a mile away, using the metro. The shuttle bus still ran from my Rosslyn office to the Pentagon at the end of the day, so I took it, to try to begin my commute home from the Pentagon. The driver really didn't have a plan; everything was disrupted. He dropped us off on the far side of the Pentagon, next to the river. That was not good for me, because I wasn't about to use my Pentagon pass to try to take a shortcut through the building - I feared they'd deactivated it and it would set off some sort of alarm if I tried to use it - and there is no sidewalk around the outside of the Pentagon that allows you to skirt the outside. So I started walking until the sidewalk ran out in front of the Pentagon exit used by the Secretary of Defense. The gate guard picked up on me real quick. He challenged me and I told him I was trying to get to the "slug lines" on the other side of the Pentagon where people catch rides home. He told me that entire side of the Pentagon outer area was closed and he directed me to Pentagon City again, about a mile away. So I had to cut through parking lots and walk along access roads. When I got to the South parking lot of the Pentagon, it had been taken over by soldiers and emergency personnel. There were army vehicles, armed guards, open sided tents, and firefighters napping on the highway embankment. About 100 yards away, near the west side of the Pentagon, was a community of tents. Many of the tents were white - no red crosses - and it had the eerie look of a morgue. By this time, I had thought about my colleagues and I being left in our building for 6 hours September 11th, with no instructions from our JAG superiors either in the Pentagon or at Bolling AFB, across the river. I began to joke to others that apparently, Plan B was to leave us lawyers in the building as bait for any secondary terrorist attack. By this time Shirley and I had received a lot of calls and messages from family, friends, and acquaintances asking if I was OK; it was a very nice. I've told people that judging from my bus route's regular path, relative to the final path of the plane, I missed being killed by about 90 minutes. I may well be wrong, but I feel I'm right. Wednesday, October 3rd, 2001. My last day of reserve duty for a while. The morning shuttle bus at the south side of the Pentagon was running again, and I got a good view of the damage to the Pentagon's west side. The gash is only about 30 feet wide, but it runs from top to bottom. I could see the "C" ring (the middle ring of the Pentagon's 5 rings of offices) through the gash, but it was pretty beat up too. For about 150 feet on each side of the gash, however, you can see extensive fire damage to the interior of all the floors on the outside E ring. That's about it. I'm still unsure about what September 11th, 2001 will mean in the long run. But this is my story from that day and afterward, for what it's worth. October 5, 2001 Kirk Foster, Major, USAFR Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource story252.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. story Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2002-03-14 IP Address The IP address of the device used to submit the item. 66.44.109.90 Annotation Annotations to this item. Military Pentagon Premonitions/Coincidence/Fate Rescue/clean-up workers/volunteers Rumors Struggle to get home Television Coverage DC:2