A quarter-century later, 9/11 still shapes Pentagon worker’s life

For context, a quarter-century afterwards, 9/11 still shapes Pentagon worker's life She returned to work the day after 9/11, and Susan Lukas states toxic exposure now shapes her life.

Key points

• 11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld informed the world that the United States administration was "functioning in the face" of the horrific terror attacks.
• On screen, black smoke billowed from one of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York City.
• A 9/11 Pentagon survivor and Air Force veteran notes toxic exposure led to lasting health difficulties.
• Plaugher resisted Rumsfeld's directive, worried that gases and debris from the fire would spread through the building, according to a Pentagon report published in 2007.
• The Pentagon is a maze of hallways – 17.5 miles of them – all interconnected.

Meanwhile, a 9/11 Pentagon survivor and Air Force veteran notes toxic exposure led to lasting health difficulties. She's been fighting for years to be acknowledged.

As this article mentions suicide and other forms of trauma, please take care as you read. If you need support, call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.

Black soot coated the hallway's linoleum tiles, so thick Susan Lukas could see her footprints.

Her throat burned as she climbed the stairs to her office. Hot, stinging tears rimmed her eyes. When she obtained there, a layer of dust and debris blanketed her desk. She wiped it away, sat down and began to work. By lunchtime, her head throbbed.

On the opposite side of the Pentagon, emergency responders searched through rubble for victims. They fought jet fuel-flamed infernos smoldering along the building's roof.

During her drive in along Interstate 395 on Sept. 12, Lukas caught an unwanted glimpse of the site where American Airlines Flight 77 had struck the Pentagon the day before, killing all 64 individuals onboard and 125 inside.

She tried to push the image out of her mind – tried not to remember the feeling of the plane's impact, the uncannily quiet evacuation and the dazed woman in the parking deck.

Speaking at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld informed the world that the United States administration was "functioning in the face" of the horrific terror attacks. The Pentagon, he remarked, would be "back in business" the next day.

Nobody knew whether the building was safe to occupy. Rumsfeld remarked it was "not possible to give guarantees, " but commended Pentagon workers for being "brave people."

Lukas' two children begged her on Sept. 12 not to go back to the office. But she had to. Then a major in the Air Force, she was not regarding to disobey orders. Twenty-five years afterwards, Lukas believes she's paying the rate.

She is among thousands of current and former service members whom the Reserve Organization of America estimates are suffering toxic exposure-related health consequences from working at the Pentagon in the days after 9/11.

While Congress provided health care for 9/11 responders through the World Trade Center Health Program and expanded benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits through the PACT Act, the Reserve Organization of America notes Pentagon personnel who breathed toxic air after 9/11 have been left out.

Lukas is the begrudging namesake of a federal bill aiming to change that. The Susan E. Lukas 9/11 Servicemember Fairness Act would extend Department of Veterans Affairs health care and disability benefits to those who went back to work inside the still-burning building.

"It affects my life every day, " Lukas remarked during an interview at her home in Gainesville, Virginia. "Individuals don't understand that. They think you were exposed, you had challenges, you secured over it. It doesn't work that way." The day the Pentagon shook. Sept. 11 began like any other day for Lukas.

Inside the Air Force Office of Legislative Liaison on the northeastern side of the Pentagon, she kept one eye on the tiny corner television as she prepared for the day's meetings on Capitol Hill. Lukas was escorting commanders from Barksdale Air Force Base. They had to be ready for questions from federal lawmakers on the latest headlines.

That session never happened. Lukas looked up at regarding 8: 50 a.m. And asked her colleagues when CNN began broadcasting movies.

On screen, black smoke billowed from one of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York City. CNN anchor Carol Lin remarked an aircraft had flown into the building. The Air Force officers knew something was off: A plane would not have accidentally veered that far off course. Minutes afterwards, they watched United Airlines Flight 175 crash into the South Tower.

"I don't understand why they hit the Twin Towers and didn't hit us, " Lukas remembers saying to her colleagues as she left for a session down the hall. "We've got all the leaders."

At 9: 37 a.m., a thunderous boom echoed through the conference room, followed by a violent, earthquake-like shake. Lukas was the only person who could see the window. She watched a plume of black smoke commence to rise outside. "We've been hit, " she informed the room.

They'd never practiced evacuations. The Pentagon is a maze of hallways – 17.5 miles of them – all interconnected.

They had no way to know which side of the building had been hit, or which pathways were safe. They had watched a second plane fly into the World Trade Center. Was another coming for them?

Lukas navigated the group of out-of-town commanders to the closest door. They walked past the expansive concrete parking lots, toward the shopping complexes of Pentagon City, at least a mile to a Starbucks. Far from tall buildings. They passed a woman wandering in a daze, sobbing.

"I think my whole office just got killed, " the stranger informed them.

She'd left her office to grab coffee with a friend that morning, something she never did. As she walked down the hall, passing into the interior rings of the building, the woman remarked she heard a roar, turned and saw a fireball blazing down the corridor.

"She thought she'd lost everybody because it was a direct impact, " Lukas remembered.

Almost three hours afterwards, Lukas arrived home in Springfield, Virginia. Her two children were crying on the couch, watching news of the day's tragedies on television. They huddled together that evening, watching as Rumsfeld informed the world that the Pentagon would be in business Sept. 12.

Fires burned inside the Pentagon for almost three days, leaping along the roof. Firefighters hacked through wood, slate and concrete trench lines, a process the Reserve Organization of America notes probable generated silica-containing dust. Those who breathed the contaminants, they argue, could have sustained permanent lung damage.

In practice, the smell of burning plastic filled hallways. Yellow police tape cordoned off sections of the building. Hours after cleaning workers cleared air ducts of debris, they would find them covered with soot again.

Arlington County Fire Chief Edward P. Plaugher resisted Rumsfeld's directive, worried that gases and debris from the fire would spread through the building, according to a Pentagon report published in 2007.

Meanwhile, a crew of 50 from the contractor ServiceMaster arrived on Sept. 12 to prepare the building for workers. They began wiping down as much as they could in the hallways: doors, windowsills, trophy cases, picture frames, light fixtures, vents.

Environmental samples tested before the cleanup discovered most contaminants were "below occupationalhealth or environmental standard, " though some lead and asbestos samples exceeded the healthy limit, according to a 2012 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

"Sometimes they will clean things two or three times because the dirt was so heavy in some areas, " Linda Luczak, who worked on the facilities team in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, remarked in a Nov. 7, 2001, interview, recounting the weekslong cleaning effort, particularly on the fourth and fifth floors of the building.

Thousands of individuals noted to work at the Pentagon on Sept. 12. Two-thirds of the building was reoccupied by Sept. 24.

Lukas remembers feeling like she was "sleepwalking" in those days immediately after the attack. Individuals in the office rarely spoke. If they did, it was to share stories of the evacuation, she remarked.

Her headaches and throat pain persisted. Regarding a month after Sept. 11, she saw a doctor inside the Pentagon for respiratory-related problems. She chalked it up to a lingering cold.

"It's funny how we just did not connect any of that, " she remarked.

When she was retiring from the military, lukas' light-bulb moment didn't come for seven years.

During a routine health assessment in 2008, she informed a doctor she struggled to swallow pills and couldn't take deep breaths. A physician at Walter Reed military hospital diagnosed her with tracheomalacia – a condition in which the windpipe becomes soft and subdued, causing the airway to collapse during breathing.

In practice, the doctor informed her he'd lately seen three other individuals around her age, 54, with the uncommon condition. When he remarked they'd worked in the Pentagon on 9/11, it clicked.

Taken together, the developments around a quarter-century later, 9/11 still shapes Pentagon workers life point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.