When it all changed

Three years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the events are in some ways still present in our lives. The 9/11 commission issued its final report this summer, with fresh details about the terrorist plot. Osama bin Laden remains elusive and the Homeland Security Department still is getting organized. We have thousands of troops in the Middle East.

In other ways, the dust has settled. The fact that the attacks occurred no longer seems shocking-it's just part of our lives. Washingtonians have gotten used to seeing beefed-up security forces and barricades near federal buildings. People in major urban areas know there might be subway bombings, but they ride anyway. Intrusive airport screening is a necessary annoyance. Terror alerts have taken their place alongside the weather report, another factor to weigh when planning a trip or outing.

It seems appropriate now to reflect on the role that federal workers played in responding to the attacks-and how those attacks changed the working lives of thousands of employees. What were sometimes unglamorous government jobs took on new importance when the country was in crisis. Federal employees processed benefits for widows, made sure supplies got to rescue workers and monitored hospitals for signs of bioterrorism. Many such contributions weren't widely known. Here, five people give their perspectives on what it meant to work for the government that day.

Bea Disman

I will never forget that morning. I was at headquarters in Baltimore, and someone handed me a note that said a small plane has just hit the World Trade Center. I jumped up from the conference table and ran out of the room. It wasn't a small plane.

My first real concern was for our people. I was able to get through to my assistant regional commissioner at 26 Federal Plaza. He said, "We're evacuating." I said, "I will get back to New York," and I took the first Amtrak train the following morning. New York is my home.

We opened an emergency command center on Sept. 13. I needed people to work that weekend. I put out the call to my managers, and I had more volunteers than you can imagine. One of my managers, whose maid of honor was missing, showed up.

We crafted an emergency procedure to get Social Security benefits in the hands of survivors. This was done in one day. We worked with employers, and we got lists of all the employees they believed were missing. We got checks on the street the first week in October. Social Security employees worked 15-hour days, and they didn't even want to be rotated.

We went wherever the news media was. I was standing with my director of communications on boxes, on piers. We just got the word out, explaining the survivor benefits.

A woman came up to me. She was pregnant and her husband had just died. She said, "Social Security, you care. You have a heart." That picture stays in my mind with everything we do.

When New York City closed down Pier 94 to give the victims' families flags and urns, all my employees said they wanted to be there. They had seen these people. They felt they had gone through the cycle with them. It was unbelievable to see people's faces when the American flag was given to them, folded up just as you would have in a burial.

I think it touched me personally from a mission standpoint to know we're here to serve the most vulnerable in society. And it touched me personally to say we all need to plan for the future, because we don't know what tomorrow will be.

McKenzie Andre

I was working in Atlanta. The first thing that came to my mind was that I should have been there. My family and friends were in New York, and that's where I grew up. That's where I did my medical training. I had just left in July.

By afternoon, there was a call from our supervisor, saying, "We're going to need some help in New York, and we don't know what kind of help." Anybody who wanted to go signed up. I expected to leave that night.

We went up on the 13th. There must have been 30 of us. We flew in a C-130, a military plane from the Australian Air Force. We were supposedly the only aircraft in the air. We landed in LaGuardia. It was raining, and the airport was completely empty. It was creepy.

We helped the New York Department of Health set up syndromic surveillance. Teams of two were assigned to 15 hospitals throughout the city, and we kept track of everybody who came into the emergency room, looking for patterns of unusual illness.

Rescue workers were coming in with injuries because they were working nonstop. Once the Department of Health saw that rescue workers were having respiratory problems, they sent us to Ground Zero.

None of the guys would wear their masks because they're really hard to breathe in and they're hot. They would be in these caverns, these collapsed buildings underground. They were searching for their buddies and they didn't want to stop. We would just try to grab them and fit them properly with their masks.

There was fear of a biological attack. Every 12 hours, the [New York] Department of Health would come out with a report saying that we were seeing no unusual activity at the hospital. Mayor Giuliani was on TV pretty much all the time. Twice a day, he was able to stand up and say: "Our hospitals are OK. Everybody stay calm." He had real numbers to back it up.

So many people and so many groups worked together. For those couple of weeks, everybody was on the same page. It was constant problem-solving. There was no script because this had never been done before. I was glad I had the chance to do my little part. I really miss New York.

Sheryl Maddux

I was with the Forest Service at the time-the branch director for emergency operations and international fires. [The Federal Emergency Management Agency] wanted us to send two incident management teams-the type of teams that manage wildland fires. We had all sorts of folks volunteering, and we had people who were afraid. They're used to responding to emergencies, but they didn't sign up to go someplace a plane might fly into.

On Sept. 12, we delivered teams to D.C. and New York. We took over the logistical support for the urban search-and-rescue teams. We had to replace breathing apparatus and filters. Teams' clothing had to be decontaminated each night. They had to be fed, put in hotels, and transported to and from the site. No job was too minimal.

In New York, we helped the city fire department put together an incident management system, a tool developed for interagency wildland fire response. We helped them set objectives, assign positions, and outline communications and safety.

Because the buildings are so tall in New York, the radio frequencies couldn't get through. We face that problem in wildland fires; the mountains interfere. We put temporary repeaters [to amplify and retransmit signals] on a ship in the harbor and on the Empire State Building.

It was hard to watch those young firefighters. My dad was a battalion chief, and I remember when a fireman he worked with was killed.

Probably the hardest job was entering every item found at Ground Zero into a database. We had people who worked 12-hour shifts doing that, and because of some of the items-personal effects, body parts-it was hard.

Everyone wanted to help. Someone would hear that search-and-rescue dogs needed dog food. All of a sudden, there would be this huge truckload of dog food. You wouldn't believe the stuff that would just show up. But someone has to manage that. You just can't have it piling up on the street, which is what happened at the very beginning. Managing volunteers and donations is something we'll do better in the future.

What we're working on now is an Agriculture Department incident management team. I never thought I'd be in homeland security. I had wanted to go back and become a director of fire and aviation in a region. But it was something you wanted to do. It's been a real positive.

Officer Conrad Smith

We really didn't know what to do. Some of the officers were saying that a plane was heading toward us. It turned into full-scale pandemonium. We didn't have an evacuation plan like we do now. We were basically playing it by ear. A lot of the members were confused, and we had to convince them to leave the building.

After we set up the perimeter, someone brought a television out to the south barricade. I remember seeing the footage of people actually jumping out of the buildings. I had never seen anything like that before. I just wasn't prepared for that.

When we saw the jet fighters fly over, everybody said, "We're safe now" . . . it was a sigh of relief.

It's a different place now. I never thought I would walk out the door and see officers positioned all around the Hill with machine guns, or wearing special biohazard equipment-the air tanks and big masks. The fear up here is a lot greater than it was before.

Before, each law enforcement agency was its own separate island. What we knew basically stayed with us. Now we have a command center where we can share information, and if we find something, we pass it on to the Secret Service and any other agencies that have an interest. We're constantly getting intelligence briefings. That's a positive aspect of what happened.

Sgt. Contricia Sellers-Ford

I was working the House chamber detail. It was my day off, but I had volunteered to work. I heard that a plane hit the World Trade Center. I thought maybe it was an accident because I didn't see the TV. Reality hit when I saw the black smoke coming from the Pentagon, and people were talking more about what had happened to the World Trade Center. I started getting scared.

We weren't allowed to carry cell phones because it wasn't part of the uniform. Now the chief permits everyone to wear cell phones as long as the casing is blue or black.

It was far from being orderly. Staffers ran for dear life. They just threw their shoes off. There were so many shoes, jackets, umbrellas, hats, just scattered throughout the building.

We did a floor-by-floor sweep of the whole Capitol building, to make sure everyone was out. After that, they told us to secure a perimeter around the Capitol. I was at First and Constitution, Northeast. We stayed there until we were told to go home around 10 or 11 that evening.

The time went quickly. We were in close proximity to other officers, and we talked about our fears and our concerns. My mind was busy. Afterwards, I thought about a career change, but I enjoy doing what I do. You take the good with the bad.