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Family members create makeshift memorial near site where hijacked plane crashed into Pentagon
Saturday, Sept. 15, 2001
 
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AP Photo
Navy Seaman 1st Class Cean Whitmarsh, looks over memorial notes left at a makeshift memorial near the Pentagon. A Pentagon ceiling fell on him and his co-workers after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001 and he is credited with helping save as many as a dozen of his colleagues.
By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Holding hands and each other, relatives and friends of those killed in the terrorist attack at the Pentagon created a makeshift memorial Saturday near the site of the devastation.

They came by the busload, bringing bouquets of flowers, red, white and blue balloons and mementos of their loved ones. Each item was placed on a flatbed truck parked on a ramp near Pentagon.

Meanwhile, the grisly task of sorting through the mass of debris continued.

Search and recovery workers encountered a large number of bodies overnight and continued to pull remains from the wreckage Saturday.

Eight-five remains have been recovered from the Pentagon, the Defense Department said. The agency said 188 people – military and civilian employees at the department and the passengers and crew in the plane – were believed killed when a hijacked airline was forced to crash into the military complex.

Those who went in to inspect the site emerged unable to describe the horror of what they had seen.

After spending two hours at the site, Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he was devastated. "Words can't describe the way it is inside," he said. "It is impossible."

He said, "It is emotional and it is something I hope I never go through again as long as I live."

Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore said the scene was one that gave him an "overwhelming feeling of danger."

He encountered wooden crisscrossed columns holding up a structure that otherwise would collapse, wet debris strewn waist-high and hazardous conditions.

Workers were encountering spot fires as they dug deeper into the site. They had almost completed the work of shoring up the damaged building.

Recovery workers reported finding many bodies Saturday.

Pieces of the plane that were found were small and almost unidentifiable, said Ed Plaugher, fire chief for Arlington County, Va.

The plane's damaged voice recorder and the charred flight data recorder from the hijacked have been sent to the FBI. Officials were hopeful the two "black boxes" would provide clues about the plane's final moments.

The estimate for repairing just the damaged portion of the historic, 50-year-old building will run into "the hundreds of millions," said Lee Evey, the manager of the Pentagon's ongoing billion-dollar renovation program.

The repair will take "a couple of years," Evey told a Pentagon briefing Saturday. "We will do it as quickly as we can," he added.

Evey said the hijacked aircraft hit a portion of the building that had been renovated and reinforced with blast resistant windows, a special reinforced steel construction, and even fire-resistant Kevlar cloth.

"The building absorbed a tremendous amount of punishment," he said, adding, "This could have been much, much worse."

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