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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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December
2005
Volume 9 - Number
3 |
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The day began as it usually did, a normal Tuesday. I left the house at 7:00 am to pick Ellen up from her house in Bethesda. When I arrived she was listening to the radio as she always did while her mother got her ready for work. Ellen is a woman I used to work with. She is a supervisory social worker for DC Child and Family Services; she also suffers from Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a degenerative disease, leaving her with very little control over her body. However she received her masters in social work and has a stable job with the District government. I, you could say was her, “reasonable accommodation,” and helped her do her work. I had not listened to the radio that day until we got in the car around 8:30 am. During our drive to work did not hear anything unusual going on in the day’s news stories. We took our normal route from Bethesda to DC, Beltway to Clara Barton, Clara Barton to Canal Road, to the Whitehurst Freeway and from there around the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Memorial and along the Potomac to southwest Washington. We arrived at the office at 9:30 am. As I settled into our office I noticed a missed call from my mother in Oregon. Given the three hour time difference it seemed odd that she had called so early. I called her back and she immediately told me of the events in New York City; two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center towers. Not having heard the news earlier, I turned on the radio as we spoke. Almost instantly I heard the disc jockey say, “the Pentagon has been bombed.” Frightened by what I heard I told my mother I needed to find out what was going on and I would call her back. I found Ellen, who had just come from the director’s office. She informed me that we were to evacuate the building and the city. I tried calling my mother back, but just got a busy signal, all phone lines were jammed. I finally got through to her and told her we were leaving the office, all she could say was “I don’t want you to die.” I told her I would be okay and proceeded to call my boyfriend, Justin, to find out if he could pick me up from Ellen’s once I got her home. He also, had not seen the news and was shocked when he turned on the television. He told me he would meet me there. Ellen and I left the office with another social worker who did not have a ride and was pregnant. We reversed our route, allowing us to see the burning Pentagon, our military fortress, from across the river. As we drove down Canal road we saw a number of black helicopters flying out of D.C., later we would find out the passengers on those helicopters were top government officials being taking to certain “undisclosed locations”. After two and a half hours we finally arrived at Ellen’s house. Justin drove me to my house to get my things and we went to his place for the night. As the evening went on we saw horrific news casts of the towers falling, people dieing and a country in shock. We felt helpless and confused and were unable to do anything about it. The next day, along with most of the country we went to work, unwilling to let the terrorists win. The fear I felt by what had happened, the sadness I heard in my mother’s voice and the anger I had towards those who could commit such horrible crimes gave me a new passion and focus. I wanted to do more to prevent these types of things from happening or at least help prepare people for disasters when they happened. I believe many people were touched by the events on September 11th as many were by Hurricane Katrina. Too often we are unable to predict such events, but cannot sit idly and just let them happen without being prepared. |