"It was fire, flame, smoke, everything"
Angela J. Williams, former civilian Defense security officer
On 9/11, I was working the Pentagon entry booth to the loading dock, which is off Route 27. It's right beside the heliport, so we're used to planes going over top, toward the airport. I was at the window, looking straight ahead. And my co-worker, Rodney, he was at the computer. The booth is about 300 to 400 feet from the building.
We had a little radio that we were listening to, and they just interrupted, saying the trade center tower had been hit. And then someone was saying another one had been hit. I said, "Rodney, for some reason, I wouldn't be surprised if they were on their way here now." I think sometimes people think that the president is at the Pentagon a lot more than he is. I think that's what made me think that. Or, it's close enough to the White House that something might affect here.
Then one of the Defense Department police officers came up and said, "Hey guys, we might be closing down. The defense alert has gone up, so we might be shutting the loading dock completely down." I was ready to go into the Pentagon for a break to get some pictures from MotoPhoto. I would have been walking inside the building, and the entrance I would have had to walk through was right near the heliport. Somebody came up to give me a break, but I said no, I would wait.
Ten minutes later, this plane was just coming at a crazy angle. It was coming in fast! All of a sudden it got very, very big. It just got loud and big. You ever hear the wind howling real loud out your window? It was like, VOOVOOOVOOO. I said, "Oh, shit!" and the plane took a nosedive. It looked like it hit the bottom of the building and blew up into the building. A big ball of orange flame comes up. Glass is flying. Pieces of building were flying. (I actually still have a piece of the building.) Pieces of the plane were hitting our booth. It was fire, flame, smoke, everything. It was like a movie. It was very surreal. I just remember feeling the wind-the power from this plane that just hit and exploded. It just kind of tossed us to the ground. The impact itself just kind of shook us. "Whoa!" and boom! And then you stay down there for a minute, like, "What the heck has happened?"
Once I got outside, trying to see what I could do next, it was just smoke. Just a singeing, aerosol-type smoke. If you breathed it too hard, you might hurt yourself. Me, Rodney, and another officer, Murphy, went outside to see what we could do. You had people that were crawling out; you had people climbing. I walked, like, probably halfway close to the building. Seeing as how I have a medical background, I asked everyone who came to me, "Can you walk? OK, keep on going as far as you can go! Can you walk? Do you need somebody to help you? Can you go?"
At that time, they came over the loudspeaker, the defense police officers: "They don't know where the other plane is! The people need to keep moving down the highway!" We didn't know if it was going to come and hit again. You know, people were thinking, they hit the trade center twice; they might hit again here. It was a scary moment because you didn't know. And I didn't know that it was necessarily a terrorist attack. I just knew that that was some wrong stuff that happened up in New York. This was some wrong stuff that just happened. You didn't have enough time to think. It was more, "OK, let's deal with this at this moment."
They were getting medical crews to every angle around the Pentagon. You saw a couple people disfigured. You might see a broken arm. You would see people bleeding from the head, maybe eyes pretty swollen. Backs are cut. Legs are cut. Shoes are off. You know the tiles from the ceiling that sort of look like Styrofoam? You had that all covering people, so it was even kind of hard to tell how bad somebody was hurt. People were just staggering out like, "OK, what the hell just happened?"
People were pretty orderly because they were scared. When you're scared, you tend to go with the flow. I was yelling at the top of my lungs for people to just keep going. "If you can move, keep going; keep moving. If you can walk, if somebody can help you, if somebody can carry you, keep going, far away!" And I never got hoarse the entire time. It seemed like an eternity. Gosh, this happened at least about 9:10, 9:15, and I stayed in that same vicinity until about noon or 12:30.
I tried to help. I stayed with this one woman that I'm really trying to find, but I never got her last name. That day, I was trying to call her mom to let her know she was out of the building. She was saying her name is April, and she had her 2-month-old son, Elijah, with her. She probably was visiting. I'm not too sure, but I assumed she used to work there. I still have this picture out of a magazine of this big, burly white guy, older gentleman with white hair, very strong-looking, came out of the building with this little tiny brown baby. And I was like, "Hold up, something's not right." So I just went straight to him and I took the baby, and I just held onto him. Then right behind him, they brought her out. I just knew that was her son. I'm not too sure why I knew that.
She was starting to breathe very heavy, getting scared. She couldn't walk. She didn't have shoes, and her feet were pretty badly cut up. She said her side was hurting. She knew she was still near the Pentagon, so she wanted to get away: "Why are we still here? Why?" I just held her hand and assured her, "I'm going to be with you until they take you to the hospital. I'm not going anywhere." I had her look me directly in my eyes. "I want you to concentrate on your breathing. I don't want you to concentrate on where you're at. I want you to try and calm down."
She said, "My son! He's not crying!" But he seemed fine. Her son had on a little undershirt, just a little "onesie" undershirt. He was awake. He was looking around, didn't cry. His stomach wasn't swollen. He was breathing fine. His eyes were clear. The only thing was, he had some of that soot debris, from the ceiling tiles, across his eyes and in his hair, so I didn't know if he had got hit in the head. So my main thing was just to keep a watch on both of them at the same time, and not let him go to sleep. When I looked at him, I looked at him like, This is my son, I'm going to take care of him while he's with me in my arms. That was my sole motivation: You're here with me; I'm going to take care of you.
I just stayed by her, holding her with one hand and holding him in my other arm. A paramedic came up and asked, "Do you need help?" And I said yes. He took her in his personal car to the hospital. I never got her last name, and I just want to know that she's all right, and how Elijah is doing.
My boyfriend, Terrence Alston, he works in the middle-inside of the building. Terrence drives handjacks, moving furniture all over the building for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I was like, "Oh, gosh, how in the world am I going to find him?" He could have been on that side, you know, delivering something, and got killed.
So I'm helping people go down Route 27 over the bridge, and I keep hearing my name. I looked over the side of the bridge, and Terrence was like, "Angie, come down here!" I don't know how he saw me, because I wasn't close enough for him to see me walking. Something told him to call, right then and there, out to me. I said, "How did you find me? There are 200-plus people flying around!" That was the biggest hug I ever got from him. I could have fainted right then and there; it was a sigh of relief. We walked from Arlington, Virginia, to D Street in Southeast. It only took us like two and a half hours. I went to get Ari, my son, who was going on 3. He was at Terrence's grandmother's house. He was asleep. I just hugged him and laid right beside him.
A lot of people, I'm sure, still have nightmares, and can't sleep, and re-enact. But I'm strong enough-I think I'm strong enough-that it made me say OK, talk about it, share what happened. I'm just glad it affected me positively. It made me want to embrace life, to not stand around and let stuff pass you by.