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October 2008                                                                                                   Volume 15 - Number 1

Perspectives...

Personal Perspective Paper

By Dale E. Furrow

I have relatively little personal experience with natural disasters, but I was living in the Washington, DC Metro area on September 11, 2001. At the time, I was an Environmental Consultant working as an industrial hygienist. I was scheduled to begin a project in northwest Washington, at 8:00 AM. By 8:30 AM, I received word from my office that the project had been canceled due to a scheduling conflict on the part of the remediation contractor. I was reassigned for the day to an on-going project at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and I heard the first reports of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center while in transit between project sites.

Though there was suspicion at the time of a potential terrorist attack, the crash was an isolated incident and did not impact my assignment. However, before I reached the Kennedy Center, the notice of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center was announced. Though it was now suspected to be a legitimate terrorist attack, the threat was in New York, and I was told by my superiors to continue to the Kennedy Center. Shortly before I arrived, the third plane crashed into the Pentagon. After hearing this news, and hearing that the Federal Government had evacuated all of the buildings in downtown for fear of subsequent attacks, I knew my only priority was to get to a safe location.

By the time I reached this conclusion, I was unable to reach anyone in my office or home with my cellular phone. Unfortunately, by the time I had the information to make a personal decision to leave, the main exit corridors from the city were already jammed with traffic. I took the most convenient route to get outside of the city, and found myself sitting on the west bound lanes of the Roosevelt Bridge, watching a tower of smoke rise to the southwest, from the Pentagon. As I sat on the bridge, military helicopters and jets were passing overhead, sirens were going off in every direction, and the radio warned of eminent attacks in the DC Metro area due to the unknown endpoint of another hijacked plane.

It was on this day that I learned the value of contingency planning. I had an older cellular phone at the time which was not SMS capable, and I could not send or receive text messages. Because I was ill-prepared, I found myself without a plan, with no way to keep in touch with my office or my loved ones, and trapped in the worst possible location at the mercy of forces outside of my control. There were several key lessons I learned that day: 1) Find a way to maintain communication; 2) Have an action plan prepared before you need one; 3) Be flexible and allow the needs of the situation to determine your course rather than sticking directly to a plan; 4) Use whatever means necessary to stay informed; 5) Base any decisions which deviate from the plan on new information.

These lessons came from my personal experience and a realization that I was not prepared. Though they were specific to a terrorist attack, I feel as though the same lessons could be applied to any disaster: natural, man-made, or technological.