By Manny Fernandez and Sari Horwitz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 12, 2005
It was five minutes before noon. U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer was walking into the Senate dining room, with the assistant director of the Secret Service and the Senate sergeant at arms, when he got a message on his BlackBerry.
His officers at a command center two blocks away were nervously watching a radar screen as an unidentified plane penetrated deeper and deeper into Washington's restricted airspace. A watch commander typed out the message, written in code: We have an air security problem.
Gainer got on his cell phone immediately and asked several questions to those in the command center. What was the speed of the plane? Its altitude? Did anyone have a visual?
"We were getting information, but it was all bad news," he said. "We didn't know whether it was friend or foe. What is going through your mind is, 'What is the drop-dead point? When do we have to make the decision to evacuate?' "
His decision came at 12:04 p.m., with the plane four miles away.
The order to evacuate the Capitol -- and orders to clear people out of nearby House and Senate office buildings, the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court -- sparked an intense but momentary panic throughout downtown Washington, cutting short news conferences, interrupting tours and reviving memories -- however briefly -- of Sept. 11, 2001.
Thousands of people, from federal workers to visiting schoolchildren, fled from different places, at different paces, with different degrees of worry.
"Move, move! This is not a drill!" police officers shouted repeatedly as senators in suits and sightseers in shorts scrambled down marble staircases to the sunlit sidewalks surrounding the Capitol.
Some walked slowly to Union Station, taking out their cell phones and conducting business as usual. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) shuffled in the afternoon heat, leaning against a pole and pausing to catch his breath.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was literally lifted out of her pinkish high heels by Capitol Police in a hallway outside the House chamber. One shoe was later found; the other remains missing.
Evacuation plans are serious business in Washington after the attacks of 2001. All of that planning yesterday boiled down to a short burst of activity, set in motion by e-mail alerts and indoor flashing lights, as well as low-tech barking from police officers who burst into Capitol rooms.
People were unsure of their destination as they headed out the doors of the Capitol and nearby buildings. There was no time for detailed instructions. Some were told by police to head for Union Station; others just received a command to "go north!"
At the White House, the evacuation interrupted a tour by hundreds of students from Spring Ridge Elementary School in Frederick, causing children and parents to sprint for Freedom Plaza. "We were in the line for the first room, and they told us to turn around and head back out," said parent Hilda Closs. "Then the Secret Service yelled, 'Run!' "
There were some glitches during the mass escape. Some congressional staff members complained of not being alerted quickly enough on their BlackBerry or other hand-held communicators. Several Senate staff members said they were urged by Capitol Police to keep walking past the park where they had been told to gather in practice drills. A Congress Daily reporter working in the basement press office in the White House said he didn't learn of the alert until he heard another reporter panicking.
But for the most part, people interviewed after the evacuations said they thought the operation went smoothly. Some said it was noticeably better than the evacuation of the Capitol in June, when a plane carrying Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) to Washington for former president Ronald Reagan's funeral strayed into restricted airspace.
"It was more orderly this time," said Nelson Kearney, a Capitol utility engineer who was at a first-floor candy shop when he heard police ordering everyone out. "People know the routes. They know the exits to take."
The panic subsided as word spread that the plane was being diverted from Washington, even before police gave the all-clear at 12:43. The Capitol's alarms, which sound like the beep of an alarm clock amplified to rock concert levels, could still be heard as people went back to their lunch-hour routines, sipping iced tea at a Capitol Hill steakhouse, munching on fruit while sitting on concrete ledges in the sunshine.
This was Washington, a capital city that has grown accustomed to evacuations the way Floridians tolerate hurricane warnings or Californians shrug off tremors. "This is the reality of life in a post-9/11 world," said Lisalyn R. Jacobs, who was at a Capitol news conference on the underrepresentation of women in the sciences when she heard shouts in the hall.
Gainer said it took five to six minutes to get everyone out of the Capitol building. He said about 35,000 people in all were evacuated from the Capitol and nearby buildings.
Everyone's nerves were momentarily rattled, including his. "Do I have heartburn right now?" Gainer said shortly after the incident. "Yes, I do."