…the DC contingent is alive and about as well as can be expected under the circumstances. We had to retrieve Liz from a crisis team meeting at GWU, but we’re all at home and in one piece. National Geographic had two people on one of the planes. I’m not looking forward to work tomorrow, but I’m going to be there, probably with a needle in one arm…
-email to an out-of-towner, 9/12/01, 12:20 am
I don’t remember much about getting to work. The alarm probably went off around 8, and I probably dragged myself out at about 8:19 to turn on the bathtub spigot and stick my head under the water, and probably got out the door by about 8:45 to try to catch the train at Virginia Square. All I knew is that we were in for a really shitty day.
When I came out of the train at Farragut West, the first thing I noticed were the troops. DC National Guard was everywhere. If there was a patch of ground big enough to park a Humvee on, there was one parked on it. There were a shit-ton of guys (and gals) walking around with M-16s and M-4s and expressions that screamed “what the fuck have we gotten ourselves into.”
I know the day before they had closed off the National Mall about 3 PM – because we had walked down there, one guy running the video camera to try to get a record of the day’s events while I sloshed down whiskey and warned future generations that drinking at 2 in the afternoon on a weekday was not cool and that these were special circumstances. Nobody was able to call or text worth a damn, and it was only the primitive CDPD-based data service on my phone that had let me get word to the rest of the crew and family that we were all OK. That was before I knew that two of our staff had been on the Pentagon plane.
That next morning, I walked to work thinking for some absurd reason that I should be bringing donuts to the guys with the guns.
I mention our deceased users because we had to go down to the basement and unlock the PBX so we could get at their voicemail and create a redirect message. And I had to install new Lotus Notes ID files so the bosses – and next of kin – could get into the email. And I remember my boss getting irritated at a voicemail from somebody complaining about an office move scheduled for the previous day that didn’t happen, and how they were behind now. I don’t remember if he gave them the business, but I certainly hope so.
Thing is, looking back, I don’t remember anyone panicking. I don’t remember anyone fleeing town. I don’t remember anything but a bunch of us knuckling down and getting to work dealing with our new reality. And I look at all those other people now, in 2010, years removed and hundreds of miles away from where the attacks happened, locked in the grip of pants-shitting terror. And when I compare how we were that day to how they are now, I can only conclude one thing:
I – and everyone who was alongside in fall 2001 in Washington DC – am a stupendous badass.