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The brave who battled fire at the Pentagon

By | Sunday, June 22, 2008

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INSIDE THE BATTLE TO SAVE THE PENTAGON ON 9-11

Presidio Press, $27, 489 pages

REVIEWED BY JOSEPH C. GOULDEN

Almost seven years after the event, the caps are ubiquitous on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk and elsewhere, emblazoned "NYPD" and "FDNY," a deserved tribute to the brave police and firemen who risked (and lost, in some instances) their lives in rescue efforts during he September 11 attacks. Sorely missing, so far as I can determine, are any caps labeled "ACFD," honoring the Arlington County Fire Department which had primary responsibility for combating the fire caused by a terrorist plane crash into the Pentagon.

Given the disparity in casualties - 184 victims at the Pentagon, almost 3,000 at the World Trade Center Twin Towers - the fact that the Arlington tragedy received relatively short shrift is perhaps understandable. Nonetheless, the firemen's bravery there is now given proper recognition by Patrick Creed and Rick Newman in "Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9-11." Mr. Creed is a volunteer fireman and an Army reserve officer who grew up in Arlington; he knew some of the firefighters involved in the story. Mr. Newman is a staff writer for U.S. News & World Report.

They begin their gripping account with a description of the destruction wrought by American Airlines Flight 77 as it smashed into the west facade of the Pentagon, the fuselage crumbling into a mass of molten metal as flaming aviation gasoline spilled into the building. Washingtonians who saw the pillar of black smoke spiraling into the sky that grim autumn day will now learn the proverbial "rest of the story" - the countless acts of individual bravery carried out in a furnace-hot burning building. Here is writing at its best, a story told through acutely personal accounts that relive three days of heroism and horror.

Under a long-standing agreement with the Defense Department, the Arlington Fire Department was the "first responder" to fires at the Pentagon, augmented by crash trucks at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and federal firefighting crews at Fort Myer. Hence much of the focus of "Firefight" is on the Arlington contingent, although the authors give due credit to the other area companies that flocked to the scene.

In the best tradition of the American military, uniformed persons and civilians alike insisted on returning to the burning building to search for missing colleagues. Citing safety, firemen tried to stop them, resulting in a firefighter getting into a shoving match with a four-star general who ended up on the ground.

There was Cmdr. Craig Powell, a Navy SEAL, who stood beneath a window and caught several persons who jumped from upper floors, ignoring painful injuries. He then held up a collapsing ceiling, surrounded by fire, while colleagues pulled the injured from the rubble.

There was Leo Titus, a civilian structural engineer and a member of Fairfax County's famed search-and-rescue team. The mission was his first - he had never seen a dead body other than in a funeral home - and he made the rookie mistake of forgetting to wear his headlamp and protective suit. But his engineering expertise led to key decisions that helped maintain the building's stability and allowed workers to start rebuilding far sooner than expected.

An ongoing concern the first hours of the blaze was the functioning of the National Military Command Center. Although located on the opposite side of the Pentagon from the crash site, the NMCC - the Pentagon's "War Room" - filled with drifting, acrid smoke, to the extent that some defense officials urged a total evacuation. Firemen feared that even if the fire did not reach the area, a dangerous buildup of carbon monoxide could cause disorientation and loss of judgment by workers - surely a bad situation should they be called upon to make important military decisions.

As Arlington fire chief Ed Plaugher explained, "In a hot, smoky fire, there's usually tons of carbon monoxide. One of he first side effects is, it makes you do wacky things. In house fires, people who have lived there for 30 years will try to get out by walking into a closet. Do you really want people in that situation making command and control decisions?"

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld overruled those calling for an evacuation. He announced that the Pentagon would be open for business the next day, demonstrating that terrorists had failed to shut down the U.S. military. (As a precaution, firemen sent in dozens of sets of breathing apparatus for persons who remained at their desks.)

Over the years, the Pentagon has been carved into a nigh-impenetrable warren of cubbyhole offices and corridors that dead-end without warning. Even in normal times, visitors regularly find themselves clueless as to where they are. The confusion was much amplified on September 11 as firemen worked in darkness, crawling around collapsed walls and ceilings, dragging heavy fire hoses behind them.

Particularly challenging was fire that began spreading around the building beneath a foot-thick concrete roof. A general pointed to a diagram of the Pentagon, indicating two areas where sensitive equipment sat, and said, "If the fire gets past this or that, they won. We will have to shut down the Pentagon." The roof was insulated with horsehair, which produced nauseating smoke as it burned. Firemen clambered to the top of the building to cut through the roof and make firebreaks.

The provenance of the book deserves mention. When he decided to explore "the Pentagon side" of the attacks, Mr. Newman visited Arlington firehouses and asked, "Was anyone here at the Pentagon on 9-11?" He quickly developed a plethora of stories. In midcourse his reserve unit was deployed to Iraq, and journalist Creed was recruited to help wind up the story. As Mr. Newman notes. "The strangest part of the research was conducting a phone interview with Arlington Firefighter John Delaney via satellite phone from a small base in Iraq, in the middle of the night - during a mortar attack. I never imagined that eventually the project would lead to taking notes on the floor of a supply room while getting shelled. . . . ."

The authors also note a sharp contrast between the Pentagon and New York's Twin Towers: "Commanders managed to gain control of a chaotic situation and get the job done. The military recovered its dead, honored them, mourned them, and rebuilt. There's no lingering controversy at the Pentagon. No lawsuits, or disputes over memorials. The place has healed."

After reading this remarkable book, I would happily don a cap with the legend, "ACFD." The men and woman of that department deserve such recognition.

m Joseph C. Goulden regularly got lost in the Pentagon while reporting for the Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1960s.