9/11 Pentagon Photographer Bob Pugh describes the lack of visible plane parts at the Pentagon by @mestruth on 3Speak
9/11 Pentagon witness and videographer Bob Pugh describes the lack of plane parts at the Pentagon, especially compared to the Air Florida 90 plane crash site in 1982 that he filmed. Note also the c...
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My name is Bob Pugh. I do spot news video overnight on a freelance basis in the Washington metropolitan area. I was monitoring the Arlington fire channels on Tuesday, the 11th of September. At about 9.30, I overheard the Arlington County Dispatcher indicate that there was an aircraft down on the 14th Street Bridge. I moved to my automobile and started toward the area. After that, they said indeed it was the Pentagon. I covered approximately four miles in around five minutes. I got to the area probably within 15 minutes after the impact of the aircraft. Parked my car on the northeast side of the Pentagon and began videotaping down to west face of the Pentagon, as close, I believe, was 50 yards from the impact site. I've learned from my associate... that you shoot the action first and you attempt to shoot the scene afterwards. But in my mind, I was trying to prioritize the overload. I mean, there was action everywhere. There was fire. There were fire trucks. There were helicopters. They were damaged building. There were damaged people. There were evacuations. There were clergy. I mean, I tried to prioritize what I could get. But I started with the gentleman picking up debris, moved on to a triage area. figured those people were going to be moving rapidly, so that was a priority for me. Then I concentrated on the firefighting itself, then the evacuation for the burn patients by air, and the collapse of the building, and then, of course, as we moved back, I just started shooting the overall scene in the helicopter traffic. It's hard for me to imagine that I was there, that I experienced it, that I witnessed a major portion of it. that it's still around, that it's, that it may go down through time as a very, very, very significant event. And I feel very privileged, but also very obligated to make sure that if there's anything that I have that's of any use or if there's anything that's of any value that I make sure that it's somehow passed on, people that will be able to maintain it, use it as they need, and just put it in context. Alright, so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? You want me to talk to the camera? Right to the camera. Okay, good. My name is Bob Pugh. I'm a freelance videotographer in Washington, D.C. I've been doing this for about 20 years now. I do it for most of the TV networks and the local TV stations, and I do take assignments as they come. What names from news agencies maybe that you've done? Oh, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, all the affiliates. I shot at freelance video yesterday for K, D-A-K in California, for a funeral from Arlington Cemetery for one of the soldiers that were killed in the Gulf War. I also do training videos for groups that need some of my material. Most of it is live action, so it's real time that they utilize quite often in their work as well. All right, so what were you doing on September 11th? Well, I'd gone to work in the morning, as I normally do. I grabbed a cup of coffee on the way in. Another day, as usual, it was bright sun. Not a cloud in the sky for September, that was kind of unusual, being as warm as it was. I went to my office in Alexandria, Virginia, where I usually monitor several radio frequencies in the area for opportunities for me to do some business and videotape some of the action in town. And about, if I think about 8 o 'clock in the morning, 8.15, some of the folks in the office were telling me that they had heard a plane that had impacted one of the World Trade Center Towers in New York. So we switched our radios over to... to the AM radio news stations in Washington, WTOP in particular. And we were listening to that commentary when, you know, in monitoring the radios and answering emails doing daily business, when all of a sudden we heard that there had been a second plane or a second impact at the second tower. And being curious as I am, that just didn't sound quite feasible to me. So, and being in Washington, D.C., you know, we figured in the climate that we understood it was in the world. It occurred to me that that could be a coincidence, not. So I began listening a little more closely to my radios. About 9.30, and in fact it turned out to be about 938, I overheard the Arlington County Fire Dispatcher. dispatch of Italian chief to an aircraft that was down in the vicinity of the 14th Street Bridge. That's one of the bridges across the Potomac from Virginia into Washington, D.C., and right into the middle of town. It was, incidentally, the site of the Air Florida crash in 1980 during the winter, so I was very familiar with the location and logistics of how to get there, so I immediately left my office and began moving in that direction. As I exited the office, I was monitoring the same radios and notifying the TV stations that are my customers of what I was hearing and when. About that time, they started relocating the impact site and getting a little more specific. and they said it was in Del Rey, which is a neighborhood south of Crystal City, south of the Pentagon, south of the 14th Street Bridge. And that's an area that I was moving toward, and I knew it couldn't be there because the smoke and fire that I was seeing myself was far in the distance from that location. As again, we got closer, the location became the Navy Annex, which is a government building that sits on top of a hill that overlooks the Pentagon adjacent to Arlington Cemetery. That could be a little bit more likely that was the direction of the smoke that I was seeing as I moved forward into the area. But as I got down toward the Pentagon and parallel to the actual Pentagon itself, I could see that the building itself was on fire. There were people that were leaving the Pentagon moving across the overpasses into the parking lots, getting away from the building itself. I was beginning to pass the action myself, so I took it upon myself to go ahead and make a U-turn across the median strip. I exited, made a right-hand turn up the wrong way ramp, and came right up into the area of the impact, parked my car, and got my equipment and left. I began videotaping immediately as I moved into the area. There was a gentleman in a suit, and looking at the video, he appears to be Middle Eastern, and probably an employee of the Pentagon, was handling some of the wreckage, a small mechanical arm of some kind that had a joint attached to it, indicating his idea that it may have be part of a landing gear. And there was some discussion amongst the other uniformed military people that it was too small, but nevertheless it was a... just a small piece of obviously something mechanical. I moved away from there and began shooting the scene from actually the northeast of the Pentagon itself, down the face that was on fire, and the firefighting that was going on. There is in my video a clip, I actually have a battalion chief from Fort Meyer putting an air bottle on his back. In discussions with him, he has indicated to me that he put that air bottle on 5 minutes after the impact, so that helps me with my timeline and my thoughts. I figured I would be better off moving toward the fire itself. No one was in control of the area. I have free rain. I know better than to get in the way, so I try to stay away from any of the actual firefighting or life-saving. I did photograph and videotape some... some of the medic units treating some of the injured immediately as I move forward. Moving behind the ambulances, I was able to get a good shot of a gentleman on the stretcher. That was being, it was pretty badly burned being put into the ambulance. He was asking the people around him to tell his family that he was okay. As I moved further still, I was focusing on the impact site and the firefighting directly across from the fire engine and the the control tower at the heliport. All the while I'm looking for, and again, seeing videotape and photographs and reading information about airplane crashes, I'm looking for wreckage, and I don't see anything discernible. I can't find a piece of anything that I recognize. I can't see the tail, I can't see the wheels, I can't see the engines, there's no chairs, there's no luggage. There's no logo. I mean, for Air Florida, when we shot that, we could see the logo of the Air Florida plane. There was identifiable structure that you could see with that kind of an impact on that aircraft. For Air Florida, when we shot that, we could see the logo of the Air Florida plane. There was identifiable structure that you could see with that kind of an impact on that aircraft. I moved along. I did photograph a lot of the actual people began to organize themselves. There was some stretcher bearers with some backboards moving into some organized line. I believe they were attempting to go back in the building to do some rescue. This was before the collapse. And they were mustering at the burned out fire equipment on the heliport concrete pad itself. And there's a lot of debris in the foreground of those videos. Again, it's very small pieces. I mean, I'm standing on pieces, a dinner plate or smaller in size. The largest piece I believe I saw was... maybe two by three feet, and it was crumpled. I believe that is the piece that everybody sees with a blue stripe. Well, or it had red paint on it, red logo, red stripe. Again, I didn't dwell on that. There was a lot going on. I noticed the clergy were beginning to show up, and I figured that was something that would be valuable. I videotaped the gentleman from the churches and from the different religions trying to figure out what they were going to do. The foam trucks were beginning to show up from National Airport. they were beginning to start their firefighting after the dispatches came through that it was a plane, I'm sure they came because of the fuel. What I was seeing immediately was they were pouring water into the actual firefighting itself, which I believe probably spread the fire deeper into the building. I just carried it further and further along. I don't know that for sure, but it sounds logical to me. There was no foam and there was no actual fuel fighting going on at that time. I saw the first helicopter land. It was immediately to my right. He was the Park Police Eagle. He landed on the road itself that was going up into the Arlington area. As I saw the actual pilots and crew start to motion, I turned to my right again and saw a severely burn patient on a journey past me. I couldn't even, I couldn't tell who he was. He was burned that badly. He had no shirt. And he was moving his hands, I'm thinking maybe either in shock or what. One of the first, and I believe one of the only patients that was Medevac that day that survived. And I do believe I have his name somewhere, is Carlos, I believe, something. There were articles written about him and his recovery later on. About the time I was filming him being loaded into the ambulance, I heard a crunch and looked back to my left. and the Pentagon, actually the floors were collapsing right across from where I was standing. The video that I was able to get of that shows the debris and the smoke coming away from the building as it's being pushed away. Now, your video has the best shot of the hole for video evidence. Best, hands down, how big, now you were right up there, how big was the Pentagon hole, how big could it possibly make? I would say, I would say if it was, 16 feet diameter, 20 feet tops. Again, I can't, that's what would start me so curious, is I was trying to find something, there was no marks on the grass. Something never hit the ground. It didn't hit the heliport. I mean, it was a precision, or awfully lucky hit. I mean, I don't know how it didn't bounce. I don't know how it hit directly in the side of the building without touching the ground, going as fast as it obviously was going. But I can't believe the thing is more than a garage door. You know, I mean, the firefighters are standing in front of it. They're looking up at it, and they're just wondering, you know, wonder what's behind it, wonder where it went. And again, I'm looking at the classic airplane crash has wrecked. Joining us now is photojournalist Bob Pugh. He was one of the first photographers to get to the Pentagon on 9-11. He's here to share some images and thoughts about that day 18 years ago. Bob, thank you so much for joining us. You're welcome. Let's start with what you remember from that day, kind of describe what still sticks in your head. It's the morning. It was just like today. It was a blue sky, warm. I was going into Alexandria, like I normally do, like I did again this morning. I stopped at Starbucks where I stopped before. I actually retraced my whole route this morning by coincidence. But it was the urgency building through the morning. We were listening on some of the broadcast radio to the New York stations about the Twin Towers, and that became kind of an urgent thing. And, you know, being in the business, we were kind of a little bit curious and envious at the same time at the opportunity. And I was listening and monitoring the Arlington County Fire Department, and I heard them send the first dispatch out that there was an aircraft down near the 14th Street Bridge. Well, I'd been there in 1980, I knew exactly where that was when the Air Florida crashed there, so I'd got in the car, and I went right out to the site, and by hook and crook in four miles and eight minutes, I was able to get up right in park almost in front of the building. Do you remember your first impression when you got there? I was, it was an overload. I mean, I looked at my front windshield, and the entire building was on fire in front of me. And there was debris everywhere. There were people running to the south parking lots. There were people standing and watching and picking up debris. I started filming immediately and moving from the east near the river all the way across the face to the west. And the action was 360 degrees. I mean, there was something going on everywhere. Those are searing memories for all of us, and for you, I'm sure, especially because as a photojournalist, you're up close and you're as close as the first responders in many cases. Are there particular sights, smells that you remember? I could smell the jet fuel. I could feel the heat, and I was under a tree, so it wasn't the sun. It was the heat from the burning building. the noise, the helicopters, the fire trucks, and just people trying to get themselves together and organize everything. I did get some video of some severely burned patients that did survive, and thankfully, and I was, you know, that I think that I remember the most. wondering what ever happened to them after the fact. You know, you mentioned when you got to the station this morning, you were talking to some people, some young people that work here and intern here, and they were either not alive or too young to remember 9-11. In many ways, what you did on that day is so important because it keeps this story not just in our memories, but it is an educational tool for those very people that you ran into this morning. Yeah, and I just don't know how you can... It's hard to relate to it. You weren't there, so you can't hear it. What I did in some of the video and audio that I have helps set the scene. But to actually be there and be involved in the entire process of moving us away and moving us back and announcing the second plane is coming, and then the news conferences at the gas station, and it was exhausting. I mean, I was dehydrated by the time I got finished, and then I needed to go into town with what I had taken and delivered to the different stations. But it was just an amazing, unexpected, incredible morning. You still live here, you were saying you retraced many of your steps from that very day 18 years ago. When you go into those places, you drive past those, drive those same routes, is it hard to disconnect yourself from what you saw? Yeah. I mean, it's really not hard. It is hard. Excuse me, I just, I kept looking out the windshield this morning, and as I traveled from Alexandria into the Pentagon area, the smoke was coming to the south, and it looked like a thunderstorm. It was all black, and I could look out my window this morning, and I was just trying to imagine that coming up again, right, as I approached it, 18 years ago, to the minute almost. Very interesting day. Yeah, and still, it seems like it was yesterday to so many of us. Yes, absolutely. Is there an image or a particular clip of video that you shot on that day that, and I've talked to a lot of photographers in that day, and they said, I did my best work on the worst day of our lives. Was there a moment like that for you? I had, there's one image that I took, Fairfax County has two helicopters, and they responded as requested, and when they sat down in the field in front of me, they shut their engines off, which meant there were no patients. All the helicopters were shutting down. The ambulances were just parked. They weren't being used. So you were either gone or transported or survived. There was no in between that morning, and that was striking. But the one image I have is the pilot from one of the helicopters was standing outside of his aircraft, looking at the burning building, and I got a great shot of him from behind. And it's almost helpless. That's how I felt he must have felt. Because there's nothing he could have done. With all the training he had and all the equipment and opportunities, there was nothing he could have done. I think we all felt that way that day. Yeah, absolutely. Bob Pugh, photojournalists, thank you for the important work that you did that day and for coming here today to talk to us about it. Thanks so much. Thanks. Are there particular sights, smells that you remember? I could, I could smell the jet fuel. I could feel the heat and I was under a tree, so it wasn't the sun, it was the heat from the burning building. And there was debris everywhere, there were people running to the south parking lots, there were people standing and watching and picking up debris. There's a lot of debris in the foreground of those videos. Again, it's very small pieces. I mean, I'm standing on pieces a dinner plate or smaller in size. The largest piece I believe I saw was maybe two by three feet, and it was crumbled. I believe that is the piece that everybody sees with a blue stripe. Well, or it had red paint on it, red logo, red stripe. Again, I didn't dwell on that. There was a lot going on. All the while I'm looking for, and again, seeing videotape and photographs and reading information about airplane crashes, I'm looking for wreckage, and I don't see anything discernible. I can't find a piece of anything that I recognize. I can't see the tail, I can't see the wheels, I can't see the engines, there's no chairs, there's no luggage, there's no logo. But I can't believe the thing is more than a garage door. The firefighters are standing in front of it. They're looking up at it, and they're just wondering, you know, wonder what's behind it, wonder where it went. And again, I'm looking at the classic airplane crash has wreckage. 7-4, I'm coming back in the downtown. Okay. 1-12. Secret Service would like us to shut down the sidewalk. Shut it down. Not gone. 104, need a unit to cover Route 27 side of the Pentagon. All officials, uh... Be advised, we have to tighten up security. The Pentagon. Okay, be advised, the clinic is setting up a tree odds. We have Arlington County en route. What else do? Okay, right now, we have an airplane that crashed into the Pentagon. That's what they're saying, it's a plane. And at this time, we've got people who are coming. out of the Pentagon who are injured. It's the heliport side to be the heliport side of the Pentagon. ...hand to the left of the heliport inside an entrance. Be advised, there's floor collapse, structural integrity is compromised. I'll give you a report…