Nation Shuts Down as It Lives Its 'Darkest Day'

City Leaders Urge Calm as Shock Ripples Through Country

America shut down yesterday. Disney World closed. So did the Liberty Bell. So did the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the Transamerica pyramid in San Francisco. So did the world's largest shopping mall, in Minnesota, and all 3,700 Starbucks coffee shops in North America. The pennant races in baseball were suspended -- all games canceled. The only planes left in the sky were military jets.

"I just can't believe something like this can happen in the United States," said Adele Randolph, an elderly woman wandering the evacuating terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. "I'm just in a daze."

Big cities and small towns recoiled at the news. At the mail processing center in Zanesville, Ohio, about an hour east of Columbus, postal worker Michael Mitchell and his co-workers immediately went to the large metal doors at the loading dock and secured them with heavy chains and a padlock. No one was taking any chances.

"The mall closed down. You know it's big time here if the mall closes," Mitchell said.

A country whose biggest political problem had seemingly been a dwindling budget surplus suddenly found itself at war with a ruthless, invisible enemy. There were rumors of hijacked planes still in the air. The TV images were horrifying, and they wouldn't stop. In the United States Capitol, there were police officers shouting "Run! Run! Run!" as staffers sprinted from the building in fear of another kamikaze attack. The chaos reverberated from coast to coast -- people raced to schools to get their children, then hung by the phone to learn the fate of distant loved ones.

In Oklahoma City, a city familiar with terrorism, about 300 people had the same idea soon after the story broke -- they lined up to donate blood. Over in Tulsa a different situation erupted: Long lines for gasoline, and rumors that prices would hit $5 a gallon.

Heather Cypret, who spent an hour getting her car filled, called the scene "just insane." Energy company executives took to the airwaves to calm the citizenry.

No sooner had the day of terror begun when the White House phone lines lit up with furious Americans. Grown men were weeping as they demanded retaliation, according to two phone bank volunteers. One summarized the general reaction: "Do something now. Do it swiftly. Don't be moderate. Get bin Laden."

"We knew this was coming, we just didn't know when," said Regina Johnson, an insurance agent in Chicago whose office closed down soon after the attacks began. "The first thing that jumped in my mind is World War III."

Los Angeles officials urged citizens to avoid retaliation against other residents because of their ethnicity. Police cruisers were stationed outside some area mosques. In Richmond, Bishop Walter F. Sullivan warned that Americans should not let anger turn into a desire for vengeance. "We cannot allow terrorists to succeed in robbing us of our humanity," he said.

In downtown Atlanta, Bill Carrilo, a junior at Georgia State University, stood with his fellow students around a TV set. "We dropped a bomb on Hiroshima, on Iraq, on Libya. In Central America, we have been active parts of coups," he said. "It was only a matter of time."

Another student, Sabrina Fridus, scrambled to reach her father, who works at the Pentagon. She couldn't get through.