INDIANA UNIVERSITY PURDUE UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLIS

COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING Administration Building, Suite 136 355 N. Lansing Street Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-2896 317-274-7711 Fax: 317-274-5457

THE BLAST WAS LIKE SURROUND SOUND: YOU NOT ONLY HEARD IT, YOU FELT IT

The IUPUI graduate students were about to be briefed about the "Navy in the 21st Century" when a tremendous roar tore through their room where they sat in one of the most secure buildings in the world.

James Buher, Director of Administrative Services for the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), was in the room with 28 employees of Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center when a hijacked commercial airliner slammed into the Pentagon, only 40 feet below them. These employees are enrolled in a graduate certificate program in SPEA at IUPUI.

The explosion that followed was like surround sound, Buher said. "You not only heard it, but you felt it."

Led from the room by the Undersecretary of the Navy who was to conduct the briefing, Buher and the others quickly found their path down a hallway impassable. They turned to escape down a stairwell, only to find the stairwell had been blown away.

With thick black smoke filling the hallway, the group placed handkerchiefs to their mouths, bent low, and held onto the person in front of them as they groped their way toward safety. In the six-foot wide hallway, light fixtures and other debris littered the floor. The walls were hot to the touch.

Through the black smoke, the voice of a security guard called out to them, directing them to safety.

The Executive Education program the students are enrolled in offers a five-week intensive graduate course that ends with a week spent in Washington. Military and civilian leaders brief the students on a variety of topics. Tuesday, they had arrived at the Pentagon for a series of six briefings. Buher said it was only when they emerged from the building that he and the group realized how few feet separated them from living and dying. Their classroom in the Pentagon was on the fifth floor. The plane crash took out the first and second floors underneath them.

"If the plane had hit 10 or 15 feet higher, the floor of the room we were in would probably have collapsed."

The group arrived back in Indianapolis shortly after 10 p.m. Wednesday.

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