Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel and long-shot Senate candidate in Louisiana, has a unique perspective on the Sept. 11 attacks.
Maness was in the Pentagon 13 years ago when a hijacked plane hit. He was a nuclear operations officer in the National Military Command Center and was on the building’s third floor when the plane crashed west of him.
He got to work at about 6:45 that morning, he said, and was amazed by the beautiful weather. He learned of the first plane crash over the phone from a friend, who saw it on TV during their conversation. And when the plane hit the Pentagon, it took him a bit to figure out what was happening.
“I think we had a little woosh in the air conditioning system, that was about it,” he said. “Then we started to smell some smoke.”
The smoke smelled like jet fuel and burning asbestos, he said. At first, people heard that an aircraft had crashed into a highway south of the Pentagon. But they soon learned it had hit the building, and started to evacuate.
“We just went into response mode,” Maness said.
After evacuation, he stayed at the building to help.
“That was what was pretty amazing about the day, even though it was very tragic,” he said, “the sense of pride I had of what I saw of all the volunteers responding — to help the injured, to help put the fire out.”
He called his wife when he heard the first reports about a plane crash on the highway, since his wife worked near what they thought was the crash site. She got their kids from school. He didn’t talk to her again until leaving the site around sunset.
His youngest son was in kindergarten at the time. Now he’s in his second week of basic training for the air force.
“Finally when I got home, we just huddled up together and prayed,” he said. “The next day, I went back to work.”
