Masonry Magazine August 2002 Page. 20
Pentagon The Phoenix Story
SERIES
The smoke was so thick in the building that anyone trying to get out had to navigate by sound.
Firefighters work to slow the spread of the Pentagon fire.
Rich Bartram was in Ft. Worth, Texas on September 11, 2001. His work on the renovation of Wedge 1 of the Pentagon was over and Bartram, field management director for Masonry Arts, Bessemer, Ala., was starting another job. Joe Windsor and Ric Vignevic were to finish up a punchlist at the Virginia building prior to turning the job over to the government. That three-year project was finally finished.
Windsor and Vignevic were doing some work on a window that morning, and had to go to a local Home Depot for supplies. They left the Pentagon about 8 a.m. and got caught up walking the aisles, as most construction people do when they hit The Home, browsing around before heading back. Some trim nails, sandpaper, no hurry; that three-year project was finally finished.
Christopher Fromboluti, a principal of the architecture firm of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, was in his office across the Potomac River from the building that he had worked on since 1994. HOK was responsible for the design of the massive Pentagon Renovation (PenRen) project at the Pentagon's Wedge 1. His work on the project wasn't over, not by a long shot.
At 9:38 a.m., while Vignevic and Windsor were stuck in traffic on 1-395, while Fromboluti and Bartram were having a second cup of coffee, American Airlines Flight 77 flew into history.
Hijacked Flight 77 tore into the Pentagon at approximately 350 miles per hour, tearing through three of the building's five concentric rings "E," "D," and "C"-while exploding. It killed 125 Pentagon workers and 64 airline passengers and crew. The plane hit at a 45-degree angle, causing it to travel through both the newly renovated Wedge 1 and a portion of Wedge 2 that was awaiting renovation. About 2 million square feet were damaged by smoke, water, and flames that burned for two and a half days. Of this, 400,000 square feet were completely demolished and later replaced in the construction effort.
Lee Evey, program manager for the Pentagon renovation project, said that if the building had not been under restoration, there could have been 10,000 Defense employees in Wedges 1 and 2. Instead, there were only 4,600 workers in the 2 million square feet of offices. Some had just moved into new Wedge 1 offices while others were waiting to move out of Wedge 2.
"I knew Ric and Joey were there," Bartram recalls. "I went crazy until I got through to them about an hour after it happened, about 10:30 a.m. I was happy to hear that they were away from the job, out getting parts. They very well could have been right where the plane went in, in Corridor 4."
For roughly 35 minutes, the survivors in Wedge 1 and 2 made there way out of the building, fighting the choking smoke and acrid fumes, many crawling along the corridors seeking exits, stairs, any way to get out. During that time, the integrity of the renovated Wedge 1 walls gave them the time to move from floors three through five to the ground floor and the exits.
Army Col. Roy Wallace was in "C" Ring on the second floor just off Corridor 4. "We were on the phone in a conference call when we heard this loud explosion," Wallace told Jim Garamone