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 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 every where 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 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, 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