Book Review - Then Came the Fire—Personal Accounts from the Pentagon, 11 September 2001

Written by: Stephen J Lofgren (ed)

US Army Center of Military History, Washington DC, 2011, 

GPO S/N: 008029005450, 340pp

Review by: Colonel (Retd) Mike Lovell, AM, psc (US)

All of us have certain events and recollections that are ingrained into our memories. We can replay them as if they happened just yesterday. Many are memories of globally significant events, some of which we observed in real-time while others were so profound that we can remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we found out about them. These memories are landmarks in our minds that have shaped the way we see the world and what we have chosen to do in our lives.

Almost anyone reading this review will share profound memories of al-Qaeda’s 11 September 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center: vivid pictures of commercial airliners slamming into the twin towers and the dreadful aftermath. Less well known, probably because it wasn’t capture on live television, was the attack on the Pentagon that occurred less than an hour after the attack on the World Trade Center. At 0937 hours a fuel-laden American Airlines Boeing 757 flew into the Pentagon at a speed of 530 miles per hour, scoring a direct hit on the Headquarters of the Department of the US Army. It resulted in the death of 125 military personnel, civilian employees and contractors and several hundred wounded, not including the aircraft passengers who perished in the crash. Among the dead was Lieutenant General Timothy J Maude, Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, who was the highest ranking officer killed in the attack. For the US Army and Washington DC community this attack was both personal and painful. It is burned into the memories of everyone in the US military and the broader Washington community.

Then Came the Fire is an anthology of sixty-one personal accounts and recollections by eyewitnesses, first respondents and survivors of that fateful day. These often heart-wrenching verbatim accounts were recorded in the days and months following the attack and provide a 360-degree view of the attack on the Pentagon, including the evacuation, immediate rescue and subsequent recovery operations. The wide variety of witnesses, including then Major General Peter Chiarelli (later General, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army) who was inside the Pentagon during the attack, and members of Washington’s ‘Old Guard’ ceremonial unit who participated in the recovery operation, provide a rich picture of the event. Beyond the preface, Stephen Lofgren has not attempted to make any commentary or draw any conclusions—he lets the interviewees speak for themselves.

To assist readers who have not worked in the Pentagon to understand these accounts, Lofgren has provided some useful photos and schematics of the building plus a list of abbreviations. However, for those people who have not visited the Pentagon, it is difficult to understand the scale of this monolithic building and the impact the attack and subsequent fires had on the people inside it. The five-sided, five-storey, five-ring Pentagon is the world’s largest office building covering around 600,000 square metres and containing 28 kilometres of corridor. An average of 30,000 people work in this fortress-like building, which is surrounded by huge car parks and highways. The fact that so many people survived the attack is a testament to the design of the building, the response of emergency services, and the spontaneous leadership demonstrated by people at all levels of the organisation as well as Army contingency planning and procedures.

Crises by their very nature are confusing and beset by uncertainty. Data is often piecemeal and unreliable, requiring leaders to make difficult decisions under great pressure. As many of the early interviews note, the most pressing issue for senior leaders in the minutes following the impact was the potential for a second attack by a second aircraft, which subsequently crashed into a field in Pennsylvania as a result of the passengers fighting back against the hijackers. This uncertainty led to the evacuation of the entire building at a time when a few extra minutes may have saved more lives from the ensuing fires.

Three lessons stand out from the various accounts:

• The vital role that officers and non-commissioned officers play as leaders during emergencies. It is the most common observation volunteered in almost every interview/story: leaders took charge. They led their people out of the building, accounted for the people under their command, and took individual responsibility for the immediate rescue operation.
• The importance of having practiced standard operating procedures for responding to crises, especially in accounting for people, defining roles and responsibilities, and ensuring business/operational continuity.
• Senior leaders must trust their subordinates to manage a crisis as they see fit. If a senior leader is not in a position to solve an immediate problem, he/she should grant complete freedom of action to the leaders who can manage the situation. Who should read this book:
• Anyone who is interested in the importance of leadership under pressure.
• Leaders who have emergency management and business continuity responsibilities.
• Commanders and staff officers tasked with mass casualty incident contingency planning.
• Australian Army personnel who are posted to the US, especially to the Washington DC area.
• Anyone involved in the specification of nationally important buildings that may be a potential target for terrorist attack.

The main challenge for Australian readers is the extensive use of jargon, which could be quite frustrating for those who have not been immersed in the US military system. However, the list of abbreviations at the end of the book should make this more bearable.

Because the book is a compilation of interviews, it is very tempting to skip whole sections. However, Lofgren has carefully structured the book by collating the interviews of people with like roles and perspectives into informal sections. The book may have been a more useful reference had the editor used more formal sections focusing on these roles.

Lofgren has deliberately limited the scope of the book to record and recall the events surrounding the attack on the Pentagon. However, one can’t help but think about how much this attack influenced the strategic decision-making and behaviour of the US Army in the following decade. How much did it influence the US Army’s appetite for war, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan?