The September 11th attack
Families grieve at makeship Pentagon memorial
WASHINGTON — Holding hands and each other, relatives and friends of those killed in the terrorist attack at the Pentagon created a makeshift memorial yesterday near the site of the devastation.
Associated Press
They came by the busload, bringing bouquets of flowers, red, white and blue balloons and mementos of their loved ones. Items were placed on a table or tacked onto a bulletin board about 200 yards from the wreckage.
The damaged west face of the Pentagon is shown in this aerial photo. Police tightened security around the building to prevent unauthorized photos of the wreckage.
"There were intense emotions out there," said Peggy Neff, of Hyattsville, Md.
Neff, who lost her partner of 17 years, Sheila Hein, a civilian employee of the Army, described the memorial as "a vigil, a journey, a catharses"
Meanwhile, the grisly task of sorting through the mass of debris continued.
The Navy confirmed that Aerographer's Mate First Class Edward Thomas Earhart died as a result of the crash. Earhart, 26, of Salt Lick, Ky., was previously listed as unaccounted for.
Search and recovery workers encountered a large number of bodies overnight and continued to pull remains from the wreckage yesterday.
Eight-five remains have been recovered from the Pentagon, the Defense Department said. The agency said 188 people — military and civilian employees at the department and the passengers and crew in the plane — were believed killed when a hijacked airline was forced to crash into the military complex.
Those who went in to inspect the site emerged unable to describe the horror of what they had seen.
After spending two hours at the site, Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he was devastated. "Words can't describe the way it is inside," he said. "It is impossible."
He said, "It is emotional and it is something I hope I never go through again as long as I live."
Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore said the scene was one that gave him an "overwhelming feeling of danger."
He encountered wooden crisscrossed columns holding up a structure that otherwise would collapse, wet debris strewn waist-high and hazardous conditions.
Workers were encountering spot fires as they dug deeper into the site. They had almost completed the work of shoring up the damaged building.
Recovery workers reported finding many bodies yesterday.
Pieces of the plane that were found were small and almost unidentifiable, said Ed Plaugher, fire chief for Arlington County, Va.
The plane's damaged voice recorder and the charred flight data recorder from the hijacked have been sent to the FBI. Officials were hopeful the two "black boxes" would provide clues about the plane's final moments.
The estimate for repairing just the damaged portion of the historic, 50-year-old building will run into "the hundreds of millions," said Lee Evey, the manager of the Pentagon's ongoing billion-dollar renovation program.
The repair will take "a couple of years," Evey told a Pentagon briefing yesterday. "We will do it as quickly as we can," he added.
Evey said the hijacked aircraft hit a portion of the building that had been renovated and reinforced with blast resistant windows, a special reinforced steel construction, and even fire-resistant Kevlar cloth.
"The building absorbed a tremendous amount of punishment," he said, adding, "This could have been much, much worse."
