Loud Boom, Then Flames In Hallways

The jet ripped a giant hole in the west side of the building nearWashington Boulevard that stretched from the ground to the roof five floors up. At least four floors on the west side pancaked upon each other. Workers and neighbors stood staring in shock at the charred, smoke-wreathed building; one described it as looking like a doughnut with a large bite taken out.

Witnesses in nearby cars and apartments realized something was wrong when they saw a passenger jet traveling fast below treetop level over Interstate 395 just after 9:30 a.m.

Terrance Kean, 35, who lives in a 14-story building nearby, heard the loud jet engines and glanced out his window.

"I saw this very, very large passenger jet," said the architect, who had been packing for a move. "It just plowed right into the side of the Pentagon. The nose penetrated into the portico. And then it sort of disappeared, and there was fire and smoke everywhere. . . . It was very sort of surreal."

Inside the Pentagon, the crash set off contrasting reactions. In some offices, military personnel calmly shut down their computers and walked out of the building. In more damaged areas, panic reigned.

Michael Stancil said he was watching CNN coverage of the World Trade Center attacks in the Pentagon basement when he heard a vibrating sound like a motor. Suddenly, a big gust of air blasted through the room, paper started to fly and smoke began to pour in.

Employees began to evacuate, picking up colleagues who fell in their hurry to escape, said Stancil, 43, an employee in financial resources services. "People were praying," he said.

Another Pentagon employee, a 37-year-old Marine major, said he was at a meeting in the innermost A Ring when he heard a thud and felt the building shudder. He and his colleagues rushed to help rescue people from an area that appeared most heavily damaged, the B Ring between corridors 4 and 5.

"From two-star Army generals to Marine officers, to Navy medics and petty officers, to Army officers and civilian contractors, everybody helped," said the sweaty, exhausted major, who was wearing a bloodstained T-shirt and carrying a face mask, as he took a break from rescue efforts.

The major, who declined to give his name, said he was part of a group that extricated a civilian pinned down by fallen pipes, chunks of wall and other debris. To keep from being overwhelmed by the hot, thick, black smoke, the rescuers passed wet T-shirts to one another to protect their faces as they removed the debris in an assembly-line fashion.

"It took 30 men 30 minutes to get just that one guy to the door 15 feet away," the major said, adding that the man appeared to have suffered cuts and bruises. He said that hundreds of people worked in the B Ring area and that it was "decimated."

"That heat and fire, it could eat you alive in three seconds," he said.