Reply #16: Moe

[DulceDecorum]

As Wallace and Skipper were standing by the crash vehicle, they observed American Airlines Flight 77 heading directly toward them. The Boeing 757 was just 250 yards away and 25 to 30 feet off the ground.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/supporting.asp?ID=309&z=0

As the firefighters dove for cover, THEY WERE THROWN TO THE GROUND by the blast of the aircraft striking the Pentagon, AND RECIEVED SHRAPNEL WOUNDS AS WELL AS FIRST AND SECOND-DEGREE BURNS.
At the same time, Young was in the Pentagon crash station, which was damaged by the impact of the jet. He sustained A SPRAINED ANKLE in the explosion.
DISREGARDING THEIR OWN INJURIES, THE FIREFIGHTERS BEGAN OPERATIONS.
Wallace found that Foam 161 was on fire and heavily damaged. He was able to alert the Fort Myer Fire & Emergency Dispatch Center by radio before having to abandon the apparatus.
With no means of fighting the fire, the men turned their efforts to begin rescuing the trapped and injured Pentagon personnel. Their efforts focused on the first floor of the building, just yards from where the impact had been.
“Through their perilous actions during the first moments of the incident, they were able to save 15 people from the burning building,” said Col. Christopher Essig, commander of Fort Myer.
The crew continued to rescue personnel and assist in the firefighting operations for the next 45 minutes, until they were obviously overcome by their injuries and were ordered to the triage area for treatment before being transported to the hospital.
http://www.sun-gazette.com/stories/VAL114.html

OK,
how many of you have been able to detect SHRAPNEL embedded in that fire truck?
Al right then, let's check out some more versions of the story.

The third firefighter, Dennis Young, was inside the building when the plane hit but emerged unscathed shortly after the crash.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_37/local_news/10386-1.html.

Staff Sgt. Tyree Bacon, from the 514th CES at McGuire AFB, N.J., received DOD's heroism award. He was a co-winner along with three Army firefighters -- Mark Skipper, Alan Wallace and Dennis Young -- assigned to the Pentagon's fire department.
http://firechief.com/ar/firefighting_air_force_nearly/

About 9:40, Alan Wallace had finished fixing the foam metering valve on the back of his fire truck parked in the Pentagon fire station and walked to the front of the station. He looked up and saw a jetliner coming straight at him. It was about 25 feet off the ground, no landing wheels visible, a few hundred yards away and closing fast.

"Runnnnn!" he yelled to a pal. There was no time to look back, barely time to scramble. He made it about 30 feet, heard a terrible roar, felt the heat, and dove underneath a van, skinning his stomach as he slid along the blacktop, sailing under it as though he were riding a luge. The van protected him against burning metal that was flying around. A few seconds later he was sliding back out to check on his friend and then race back to the firetruck. He jumped in, threw it into gear, but the accelerator was dead. The entire back of the truck was destroyed, the cab on fire. He grabbed the radio headset and called the main station at Fort Myer to report the unimaginable.
The sun was still low in the sky, obscured by the Pentagon and the enormous billowing clouds of acrid smoke, making it hauntingly dark. The ground was on fire. Trees were on fire. Hot slices of aluminum were everywhere. Wallace could hear voices crying for help and moved toward them. People were coming out a window head first, landing on him. He had faced incoming fire before -- he was with the hospital corps in Vietnam when mortars and rocket shells dropped on the operating room near Da Nang -- but he had never witnessed anything of this devastating intensity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38407-2001Sep15

Wow!
Heady stuff.
Lots of action.
And that's what makes it ever so different from this:

“I was driving the truck to the scene,” Ruffolo recalled. “It took about four or five minutes because of traffic, but it seemed like an eternity.”
“As soon as we popped over the hill, I said, ‘JESUS CHRIST, WHERE'S THE AIRPLANE?’” Buongiorne said. “I'VE WORKED AROUND 757s, AND I KNOW HOW HUGE THEY ARE.”
Foam Unit 331 from the airport was the first arriving foam unit on the scene, and began to extinguish the blaze from what had been American Airlines Flight 77. They were able to extinguish the bulk of the aviation fuel at the impact area, and used hand lines to extinguish spot fires and burning vehicles adjacent to the Pentagon.
http://www.sun-gazette.com/stories/VAL115.html

Please add
Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority firefighter
Nicholas Buongiorne
to the long and ever-growing list
of people who ask the question:
Wherdy go?

But I digress from the LACK OF IMMEDIATE FIRE at the Pentagon.

Young: I was working the jail in the processing section and we were watching the twin towers on TV and for some reason something told me to go outside. I went to the courthouse on my break and went to the 9th floor. The Pentagon is about four miles from us. From our office you can almost see it. As I got off the elevator and opened a door to one of the offices, Art said the Pentagon just got hit. He could see the smoke from his office. He was watching a program on the news and they were interviewing a terrorism expert from the Pentagon who had just said he thought they had been hit by a BOMB. I was technically on a break and Art's car was parked out back . We were lucky to get on an elevator that took us right down. Art was so flustered when we got in the car. He couldn't remember how to get us to the Pentagon.
We got on the North side of the Pentagon we didn't know if it was a plane or what. I said 'Wherever there is smoke, go.' We were hopping curbs. THERE'S A BIG TREE ON THE WEST SIDE BY THE HELIPAD. WE PARKED BESIDE THAT TREE AND WE GOT OUT. We told the police department we were there and ran to the helipad. Everything was happening so quick. I felt like I was in a movie. We were jumping over pieces of a plane. THE FIRST THING WE DID WAS WE WENT TO THE BUILDING ITSELF TO THE LEFT OF WHERE IT IMPACTED. WE STARTED LOOKING FOR PEOPLE. THERE WAS NOBODY. IT WAS SILENT. THERE WAS A FIRE TRUCK AT THE HELIPAD (BUT)NOTHING WAS ON FIRE RIGHT AWAY.
WE REMOVED SOME FLAMABLE MATERIALS FROM THE HELIPAD AND FINALLY WE SAW HANDS IN A WINDOW. I REMEMBER IT WAS 13 WINDOWS DOWN FROM WHERE THE PLANE IMPACTED. We took one lady out and then a second lady. She had so much soot on her I couldn't tell the color of her skin. Art grabbed a guy. There were only 3 or 4 people. They rushed everyone away.
At this time more fire trucks were there. They had roped off a section to direct who was coming in and out. The military installation was trying to keep control but it was chaos.
Then there was word of an inbound plane 10 minutes out. This brought me back to the Gulf War. I could smell the fuel burning.
A fireman grabbed me and took me away from the building. THE WINDOWS ABOVE US HAD STARTED TO MELT AND FALL OUT. I had lost track of Art. He had gone into the building but he was called out because of the second plane. People wanted to go in and they had to force people out because they were going to become a casualty. For the rest of the day we helped pick up debris. We came across personal affects from the plane. We gathered it up. It was like a crime scene.
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:n78avADHtZEJ:www.usaonwatch.org/newsdetail.asp%3FAID%3D48+%22Michelle+Gaseau+%22++attacks&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Isn't it amazing how those in charge were
SO ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE
that the Pentagon would be hit AGAIN by that plane?
Why, they had to stop EVERYTHING.
Hmmmm.
Good thing General Van Riper was nowhere around.
He would have flipped a gasket, and probably earned himself a court-martial as well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,778139,00.html

Curious how this time they KNEW that it was 10 minutes out.
Even though the building was now on fire and the electicity was being shut off.

Inside the Pentagon, as thousands of employees began evacuating, Kathy Greenwell watched all hell break loose across a bank of computer screens in the Building Operations Command Center where she is an operator. Phones started ringing, 355 fire alarms went off simultaneously, and the computers, which monitor such things as air quality, water pressure, temperature and electrical systems, started spitting out information faster than anyone could read it.
Dennis Smith, a building inspector and former Marine, was smoking a cigarette in the center courtyard when he heard the roar of engines and looked up in time to see the tail of a plane seconds before it exploded into the building. He took off toward the crash to help get people out of the building. “I looked up to the third floor—there were people banging on the windows. The smoke was filling up, and then they were just gone.”
Metal fire doors began automatically closing off corridors. Dust from pulverized Sheetrock and thick smoke from burning fuel began to fill the air throughout the building. And because THE AIRCRAFT HAD HIT THE PENTAGON'S EMERGENCY POWER GENERATOR, there were no emergency lights in stairwells or corridors to help lead people to exits and safety, says Steve Carter, assistant building manager in the Federal Facilities Division, the office responsible for Pentagon operations.
The Building Operations Command Center soon lost its cable TV connection, Greenwell says, which meant that while most Americans were watching the disaster unfold on television, Pentagon building personnel could see little beyond the smoke-filled corridors. For some, it would be a day or longer before they would get outside and see the collapsed façade that dominated images of Washington projected around the world.
BROKEN WATER PIPES WERE FLOODING THE PENTAGON'S WEST SIDE, AND LIVE ELECTRICAL WIRES THREATENED TO ELECTROCUTE BOTH RESCUERS AND THOSE TRAPPED IN THE BUILDING. Matthew Morris, the power generator shop supervisor, knew immediately what had to be done. Finding his way through dark hallways filling rapidly with smoke and water, Morris got to a critical electrical vault and SHUT DOWN FOUR 13,800-VOLT CIRCUIT BREAKERS.
“He took his life in his hands to do that,” says co-worker John Robinson, describing how Morris’ actions likely saved many lives. The force of the crash and resulting explosion had blown the metal doors and a wall out of the vault. The force of the electricity flowing through the system was so powerful, it took tremendous strength for Morris to shut down the huge breakers on his own, Robinson says. “If he hadn’t done that, a lot of us probably wouldn’t be here.”
http://www.govexec.com/features/1001/1001spec1.htm

Anyhow this shut down seem to have GREATLY IMPROVED the communications between the Pentagon and the nearby airports and it probably also fixed that
"radar pointing the wrong way"
problem that we have heard Condi singing about.
Hey, you did notice that the force of the crash and resulting explosion had blown the metal doors and a wall out of the vault.
But yet and still this all had NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on
the Incredible,
the Inimitable,
the Impervious,
the Inscrutable,
Mother of All Floors.