Survivor studies the whys of 9/11

Former Navy Lt. Kevin Shaeffer celebrated a Christmas yesterday in Alexandria that some emergency workers did not think he would see.

Mr. Shaeffer was inside the Navy’s command center on the morning of September 11, 2001, when al Qaeda terrorists flew American Flight 77 square into the Pentagon’s southwest wall. Few inside the center survived. In fact, in a catastrophe that appeared as if it would produce mass numbers of wounded, just seven inside the Pentagon, including Mr. Shaeffer, were critically burned.

Today, after nearly dying from a series of heart attacks, the 31-year-old Naval Academy graduate is on a new mission. He was medically retired from the Navy and joined the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. His focus is the emergency response after planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In a sense, he is studying his own survival.

Mr. Shaeffer tells the story of September 11 with point-by-point precision.

By the time Flight 77 reached the C corridor, the airliner and 64 passengers and crew were a moving ball of fire.

The impact destroyed a lot of offices and 189 lives, 125 inside the building. The Army’s personnel management shop took a direct hit. So did the Navy’s command center, where casualties were the heaviest. The center is a large open facility with lots of cubicles.

Mr. Shaeffer had been weighing a career decision that day. Should he remain in the Navy, or pursue other interests such as the law or politics? He worked two layers away from the impact, protected by the outer E and D rings of steel and concrete fortifications.

Like many at the Pentagon, Mr. Shaeffer was engrossed in the Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR, due in a few days. He was writing a strategy brief on war fighting and had paused watch television, which showed the burning World Trade Center in New York.

Suddenly, he was in his own race to escape a jet-fuel fire and its scorching heat. It was 9:43 a.m.

“In one second it was a live, bustling space full of a lot of people and the next minute I was standing in my cubicle watching a bank of TV sets, watching New York City and at that point we knew it was a terrorist attack,” Mr. Shaeffer said. “I was literally in the heart of the Pentagon. The largest office building in the world. But in an instant all that changed and the entire space exploded and blew me to the ground. I knew immediately I was on fire. I had to roll and escape the fire. I stood up and could not recognize anything around me.”

The thick smoke hid any escape routes. “I called out. There was no answer. I had to fight my way out or I was going to die in there.” He finally spotted something familiar: a gaping wound where the electronically controlled entrance had been. The ceiling had collapsed. Water pipes were broken and electrical cables were frayed. He feared he would get trapped if he went for the door, so he stayed low, crawling over the rumble and fire.

As he moved deeper inside the Pentagon toward the A and B rings, the inner corridors of the five-sided building, he suddenly saw brilliant rays of sunlight. He had reached what would later be called the “punch-out hole” — the point where the plane’s fireball blew open its last cavern as it rolled through three corridors. That last bit of damage turned out to be Mr. Shaeffer’s savior.

“I stopped and stood and walked through that.” Now, he could see the damage more clearly, to the building and to himself. “I could see the skin on my arms and hands were charred, and the skin was hanging off. I thought of the photograph of that young girl in the Vietnam War who was running down the road, who had been injured by a bomb attack.”

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