Fire chief recalls day of terror

 PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. - It’s been nine years since American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, but  memories remain with those who were there in the aftermath.

Prince William Department of Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Hadden Culp was one of the many firefighters called to help after hijackers crashed the airliner into the center of the nation’s defense that morning.

It was Culp’s job to help urban search and rescue teams get inside of the partially demolished fortress so they could search for survivors.

“They had two teams working 12 hours on and 12 hours off, and while I was there they asked me to be the liaison between the [urban search and rescue team] and the command staff. I said, ’OK, I’ll do whatever you need me to do, I’ll dig a ditch if I have to,’ ” said Culp.

Fires raged through the building, the threat of collapsing beams always present.

In places where fires had been extinguished, Culp soon found himself faced with the job of isolating or stopping the flow of electricity to those areas, so search teams could look for survivors.

“There were broken water pipes and things could be sparking, and I knew the command staff was under pressure from many different areas to get this opened up. But it wasn’t safe to send our people to certain areas, because the power was not secured,” said Culp. “There was just this tension between [search teams] and the command saying ‘We’ve got to get in there,’ ” said Culp.

But help would soon come via a man carrying a “big book.” He was the superintendent of maintenance at the Pentagon, said Culp.

Inside that book were all the schematics of the power grid for the Pentagon. Knowing that, Culp quickly went to his commander and told him of his discovery.

“I was able to hold on to those guys and get the [search and rescue] guys so that we could isolate the electricity in certain segments of the building, so it was safe for our people to work in there,” said Culp. “That was a big milestone for progress.”

Prince William County lost 22 residents when two jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers and another into the western face of the Pentagon. In all, 2,600 people died in the World Trade Center attacks and 125 people in the Pentagon.

On Friday, county residents and officials gathered at the Liberty Memorial  outside the Prince William County Government Center in honor of local 9/11 victims.