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9/11: The VDOT (Virginia Department of Transportation) Went Into
Action
By mrs panstreppon | bio

I want to share this 9/11 story with everyone after re-reading it today. Like many New Yorkers, I don't know much
about what happened in Washington DC on 9/11. I didn't save the original web address when I found the story in
either 2002 or 2003 but I would think its authenticity can be easily verified.

Here's the story about the VDOT on 9/11 in its entirety:

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September 21, 2001

THE FRIDAY REPORT

VDOT Values in Action

National Customer Service Week will be held Oct. 1-5, and all VDOT work units will recognize and celebrate
excellence in serving our internal and external customers. In conjunction with announcing the upcoming special
week, today's Friday Report will include an account of VDOT employees' rapid, and in some cases courageous,
response to the terrorists' attacks on Sept. 11. This account also will appear, with photo coverage, in the next
VDOT Bulletin. Today's Friday Report departs from its normal content, but the unusual period in which we have
begun living seems to warrant this momentary departure. Further, the selfless actions of VDOTers on the first day
of the crisis epitomize the best of customer service -- not to mention dedication to duty.

------------------------------------------------------------ --------------

Northern Va. Braced for Another Attack!

Smart Traffic Center staff stayed at their posts after

terrorists' plane crashed into the Pentagon down the hill.

It was not a disaster movie; it was real.

On Sept. 11, just before 9 a.m., a hate-crazed terrorist deliberately crashed a hijacked passenger plane into a
World Trade Center tower in New York. A few minutes later, another suicidal pilot dove a second hijacked
airliner into a second World Trade tower.

What could be next? No one knew. But everyone knew America was under attack. For most VDOT employees
this was the closest thing to a declared war in their lifetimes. "This is my Pearl Harbor!" said one. Others echoed
that belief.

Thoughts of family and friends rushed to consciousness. Minds were immediately seized by dread realizations:
"My best friend's husband works in the World Trade Center...." "My parents are scheduled to fly out of D.C. to
London today...." "I have to get to my children...."

Stunned, some VDOTers were viewing a television replay of the second airplane crashing into the WTC. Jimmy
Chu, manager of the VDOT Smart Traffic Center (STC) in Arlington, and several of his staff were watching, too.
Then, at 9:37 a.m., Chu and other STC employees heard the window-rattling noise of a fast-approaching aircraft.
It was close --much too close!

------------------------------------------------------------ --------------
The hijacked plane was coming up Columbia Pike, unbelievably low. It exploded into the Pentagon seconds after
nearly skimming the rooftop of the Smart Traffic Center.
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------

Madelyn Zakhem, executive secretary at the STC, had just stepped outside for a break and was seated on a bench
when she heard what she thought was a jet fighter directly overhead. It wasn't. It was an airliner coming straight
up Columbia Pike at tree-top level. "It was huge! It was silver. It was low -- unbelievable! I could see the
cockpit. I fell to the ground.... I was crying and scared," Zakhem recalls.

Two seconds later, perhaps three, as Chu looked out his office window, he saw a hijacked plane explode into the
fortress-like walls of the Pentagon on the plain just below him. STC staffers remember a loud thud, then a terrible
explosion, and then a fireball burgeoning from the core of America's military power.

In the developing chaos, Kamal Suliman, traffic operations director for the Northern Virginia District, phoned the
district office in Chantilly to report. Assistant district administrator Ken Wester came on the line to listen and
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then to say: "Just stand fast. Just keep doing what you're doing, and we'll deal with this." For the next 24 hours,
the nation and most every government office in it did just that.

In the STC, however, employees continued with their duties while thinking that the nation was under attack and
that more explosions would follow.

While everyone in or near the center heard the plane, not everyone saw it, and some thought the plane was the
first missile in a missile attack.

Knowing that they might be a military target, scores of people began evacuating the Navy Annex directly across
the street from the STC.

------------------------------------------------------------ --------------
Told to evacuate, traffic controllers stayed at their posts, even
though a second terrorist plane was reported on the way, and some thought a missile attack was under way.
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------

Nevertheless, when emergency officials came with loud speakers, telling everyone to evacuate, traffic operations
director Suliman told them that VDOT would not evacuate until they were ordered to do so by military authorities
or state police. At the same time, rumors were everywhere that another terrorist's plane was only 30 minutes
away and headed for the
area -- then 20 minutes... then 10 minutes. "We thought about it, and we stayed. That's not to say we weren't
afraid," remembers Chu.

Similarly, Marilyn Taylor, STC operations manager, "Don't think we weren't afraid. But we stayed. Our STC staff
maintained their work stations and continued monitoring cameras and working with the Navy, even when there
were rumors the second plane was coming. They never got up."

Knowing that offices in the Washington area would likely be closed and that a massive evacuation would begin,
Mark Hagan, smart traffic signal manager, implemented special traffic management strategies. HOV lanes were
reversed and opened up to all traffic heading south on I-395 and I-95. The district's state-of-the-art traffic signal
system was quickly moved into its "July 4th" mode to allow for the maximum traffic flow out of the D.C. and
Pentagon areas for those heading south and west to safety. Arnold Nelson, interstate maintenance manager in
Northern Virginia District, and his team played a key role in mobilizing maintenance forces, providing required
equipment, and implementing required lane closure plans. Contractors' crews were told to stop work on roads in
the region.

At the STC, several VDOT safety service patrollers immediately went to the Pentagon to see if they could be of
help, offering assistance, giving directions, and sometimes words of comfort to personnel coming out of the
Pentagon. "They were asking 'What is happening?' and there was concern for family and friends; but there was no
panic," recalls Pete Todd, safety service patrol operations manager.

------------------------------------------------------------ --------------
Traffic center staff helped the Navy set up an emergency center in the STC building. "VDOT went 100 percent"
to support the Navy, says an observer.
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------

Meanwhile, at the STC, Jimmy Chu told an officer from the Navy Annex that the center would offer the Navy
computers and telephones to help restore communications. In short time, the center's conference rooms and
several offices were filled with Navy personnel, including several admirals, who set up communications and
command centers -- which facilitated Navy personnel checking with area hospitals to determine where survivors
of the crash had been taken. VDOTers at the center turned over desks, telephones, and computers to the Navy and
furnished office supplies of any kind needed, and coffee.

Shortly into the crisis, the FBI called the STC to report that children from the Pentagon daycare center were

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sitting out on the Pentagon lawn and to ask if VDOT could offer them a safe place to go. Harry "Junior"
Woodard, Columbia Pike AHQ superintendent, invited authorities to bring the kids -- several dozen of them -- to
the maintenance headquarters next to the STC. They and their caregivers came -- with blankets, fold-up beds,
mattresses, diapers, etc. STC personnel helped them move in. Parents, learning later where their children were,
picked up the youngsters throughout the day. VDOTers bought pizza for the children as well as for Navy
personnel in the STC.

A VDOT consultant at work in the STC when the crisis began asserted, "VDOT went out 100 percent to support
the Department of the Navy!"

------------------------------------------------------------ --------------
VDOT districts gear up for action. Culpeper Tiger Team travels to the emergency.
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------

Meanwhile, VDOT districts geared up. Culpeper District sent a Tiger Team of 42 members to Northern Virginia
along with 17 changeable message boards, 12 crash cushions, and 475 traffic cones. Staunton District put crews
on alert, but they were not needed. Fredericksburg safety service patrol members joined their counterparts in
Northern Virginia to assist traffic flow with emergency signage and detour information. VDOT units and
contractors supplied lights to the crash site at the Pentagon to assist in the nighttime recovery work. Hampton
Roads VDOT personnel assisted state police in inspecting all commercial truck traffic going through area
tunnels. Other VDOTers provided roadblocks and secured entrances to nuclear power facilities.

Captain Donald Garrett, who was helping man the State Police Unified Command Center next to the STC,
commended the department's employees: "VDOT personnel are on the ball. They set up cones quickly and freed
us up to move on and do more important things."

VDOT's Transportation Emergency Operation Center (TEOC) in Richmond continued to assimilate and distribute
information to VDOT and other government units and to answer telephone calls from citizens inquiring about
road closings and conditions. VDOT's Office of Community and Public Relations supplied continuous updates to
the news media, and the office's Web site staff prepared constant updates for the department's Web page.

A group of employees in Central Office (and probably other places) offered prayers throughout their lunch period
for the injured and missing and for those involved in rescue work. Thankfully, there were no casualties among
VDOT employees.

------------------------------------------------------------ --------------
Governor Gilmore and others thanked VDOT. Commissioner Nottingham commends employees for remaining
calm and acting professionally during crisis.
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------

On the evening of the fateful day, Gov. Jim Gilmore visited the STC to meet with and thank VDOT employees for
a job well done.

In a letter to VDOT team members on Sept. 12, Commissioner Charles D."Chip" Nottingham wrote that
"September 11, 2001, will go down in history as one of the darkest and saddest days in our nation's history....
Words will never be able to express the collective sense of shock, outrage, and grief that we all share."

The Commissioner praised the many VDOT employees and offices who managed the transportation system in an
efficient way on Sept. 11 "so that transportation problems in Virginia were virtually non-existent and that travel
information was relayed to the public quickly." He added his thanks for "remaining calm, acting professionally,
and helping VDOT lead the way in our Commonwealth's response and recovery efforts."

IN HARM'S WAY!

"If I had been on top of our building, I would have been close enough to reach up and catch it," Madelyn Zakhem,
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an executive secretary in the Smart Traffic Center (STC) in Arlington, said two days after the terrorist plane
rocketed directly over her.

In the final few seconds before the terrorist-commandeered plane exploded into the Pentagon, the plane roared
down on Columbia Pike, almost skimming the roof of the STC after barely missing the Sheraton Hotel. The
noise, VDOT team members said, was unbelievably loud, and most felt the hijacker was nosing down the plane at
full throttle. "It was so close the building was shaking," recalls Jimmy Chu, STC manager.

Some VDOTers were sure the plane had shifted its direction slightly to avoid a 100-foot-tall cellular tower
adjacent to the STC building. As the plane went over the STC, the hijacker banked the plane, lifting the right
wing up, in order to swoop down the hill into the target.

Just before impact, the plane clipped off two VDOT light poles on Washington Boulevard, a football field or two
away from the Pentagon. In the same area, the blast from the plane's impact damaged the lenses of one of
VDOT's traffic monitoring cameras and knocked the camera sideways.

Days later, VDOTers still could feel the awesome closeness of the doomed plane to the STC. The tangled
wreckage down the slope, slightly more than half a mile away, graphically portrayed the intent of the brutal and
barbarous monsters at the controls.

FRIDAY'S QUOTE:

Larry Cloyed, project manager at the Springfield Interchange, visited his favorite Washington site, the Lincoln
Memorial, last weekend to reflect on the tragic events of Sept. 11. He pondered the timeless, eloquent words of
Lincoln after the Battle of Gettysburg, which Cloyed said gave the President's "own assessment of our nation and
its potential, and the necessity for carrying on the great struggle to preserve it intact." Cloyed sends this quotation
from the Gettysburg Address:

"........It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead
we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Abraham Lincoln

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mrs panstreppon's blog
Mar 27, 2006 -- 06:49 PM EST

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On March 27, 2006 - 7:56pm hcberkowitz said:

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I was living about 3 miles from the Pentagon, and my windows shook from the crash. While I was aware of the
superlative job done by the Arlington County Fire Department as incident commander, as well as the smooth
hospital operations, I hadn't heard this story before. Thanks!

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On June 27, 2006 - 7:20pm mrs panstreppon said:

You are welcome, HB. I was fascinated by it myself. I am especially interested in the part about the Navy
admirals using VDOT computers that day. I had no idea that the Navy's IT system was down on 9/11.

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