60 minutes rewind even though 125 people were killed in the pentagon september 11th there was
still something miraculous about that day the 757 obliterated the first and part of the second floor
but the third fourth and fifth floors remained suspended in midair for 35 minutes hundreds of
people escaped how is that possible the answer lies in a partially classified government study
of the terrorist bombings that have come before like oklahoma city and kobar towers everything
we learned in that project was hidden inside the walls of the pentagon itself in anticipation that
one day the building would be bombed you're about to see how they defended the building but first
hear from a man who experienced the miracle of the pentagon five minutes before the plane hit
somebody asked somebody said come over you got to see what's going on so i walked over and i was
looking at the television and i walked back to my desk and i called my wife john yates is a civilian
security manager in the pentagon that day he was in his office watching the world trade center on
tv and she asked me then to do the rest of my work for the remainder today from underneath my desk
so i you know she just said it jokingly and i and i and i joked and i said yeah okay honey i will
and i walked back over to watch some more of what was going on in new york and i i
had just been standing there for just a couple of minutes when it the plane hit the building
what happened the the sound i i just it was deafening absolutely deafening and uh i mean
i just remembered this bright ball of fire that just went right over my head that fire burned 35
percent of his body the plane hit directly below his office but the floor held giving some but not
all a chance to live there were people standing next to you in the room watching the television
watching what was happening in new york city yes what happened to them they didn't make
it lady standing to my left didn't make it
they were standing right next to you within an arm's length yes so why am i here i don't know
i just don't know
he's here in part because his floor was reinforced and held up for half an hour in
an astonishing stroke of luck the terrorists had hit the only section of the pentagon
the only section designed to resist a terrorist attack we had made several modifications to
the building as part of that renovation that we think helped save people's lives
runs a billion dollar project to renovate the pentagon they've been working on it since 1993.
the first section was five days away from being finished when the terrorists hit it with the 757
you can start to smell the smoke here in this part of the building smell the smoke you can see
evidence of smoke damage here and there to see how so many escaped you have to look inside the walls
the renovation project built strength into the 60 year old limestone exterior
with a web of steel beams and columns so you have these steel tubes again they start on the first
floor go all the way up to the fifth floor and all the way through from floor to floor
we have everything bolted together with horizontal steel as well as the vertical steel so it's all
put together in one strong matrix of steel supports encases the windows and provides
tremendous additional strength to the wall when the plane hit at 350 miles an hour the limestone
outside shattered but inside those shards of stone were caught by a shield of cloth that
lines the entire section of the building this is a ballistic type cloth it helps prevent that masonry
from perhaps fragmenting and blowing through an area where there are people it's essentially a
bullet resistant vest for the building that's in fact what they make bullet resistant vests
out of is the same type of material all of this especially the steel held up the third
fourth and fifth floors they stayed for 35 minutes you can see them through the smoke suspended
over the hole gouged by the jet only after the evacuation did the heat melt the new steel away
if that area had not been renovated that wall would have lasted how long looking at the
number of columns and support structures that were otherwise completely destroyed
it might have collapsed immediately i basically said a silent prayer to myself
for the victims and then in thanks that it hit where it hit lieutenant general bob flowers
commands the army corps of engineers the corps helped design the pentagon's new protection
the engineers studied past attacks including the 1983 marine barracks bombing in lebanon
oklahoma city in 1995 the u.s embassies in east africa and the kobar towers barracks in saudi
arabia at kobar towers for example most of the damage and casualties at cobar were caused by
flying debris from the structure and from the glass etc and so based on that we worked to
design things to prevent flying debris and flying glass at oklahoma city the bulk of
the casualties were caused by the collapsing structure so one of the things we studied was
how to put redundant capability in a structure to prevent it from collapsing if it was attacked
and so by applying the lessons that you learn from doing those studies you can better protect
structures in the future tough way to learn a lesson absolutely but there is an easier way
the corps of engineers is making a science of terror setting off its own bombs this is the first
time the public has been allowed to see the corps counterterrorism work at its research center in
mississippi reed mosher is the technical director for survivability you've developed a team of
specialists that goes to these terrorist strikes as soon as they happen we try to get there as soon
as we can to so we can get the most information of what occurred before they start doing
moving things repair work or even part of the removal for search we'd like to get there as soon
as possible what can you make of these buildings once they've been blown to bits we want to find
out what performed well what didn't perform well try to characterize the size of the bomb the blast
what did you hit this with with a small amount of explosives moser also designs his own
terrorist bombings in miniature with exacting scale models of reinforced concrete buildings
you've modeled this thing right down to the finest detail you've got what we used to call cinder
blocks these concrete masonry units right they're actually scaled down to a quarter scale and we use
these in the experiment to build the walls inside of it on this day moser's team is testing a common
interior wall particle board steel wall studs and sheet rock it's set in a steel frame with
instruments inside right can we have a look yeah sure well it's close in here so this is the other
side of the wall we were just looking at correct this would be the interior of the building right
we're armed ready to go once the area is all clear they set off a bomb
inside the destruction is captured in slow motion they've done hundreds of these tests
to create new kinds of building materials for example watch what happens to this concrete wall
now look at the same kind of wall after it's been sprayed with a new plastic coating
the corps of engineers runs these experiments through its supercomputer center one of the
most powerful in the nation the computer can test various kinds of bombs against different buildings
without breaking any glass it's not just a pretty movie it's a
actual calculation in a special 3d imaging room
mosher showed us how the supercomputer recreates the blast wave at kobar towers
and predicts the path of every shard of glass
from a single breaking window just reach up and pick them out
these studies have helped create a new generation of window that can stand up to tremendous force
this experiment shows how those new windows can be fitted into an old building so the window is
strapped in it's like a seat belt seat belt right that's a good way to uh and it pops out a couple
of feet looks like and stops stops exactly what a mess the core has tested the hard way more than
100 window designs so what you have here is is glass on the outside glass on the inside with this
plastic sheet in the middle right it retains all the glass particles when it's hit they all crack
and it's actually connected into the frame so that gives it strength to keep it from blowing in
the renovated section of the pentagon had just been fitted with blast resistant windows
this is the room that i was looking out from you were behind u.s army lieutenant colonel vince cam
was sitting next to one of those windows i was sitting basically about three feet away from the
window and i can see with that loud bang that accompanies a fireball that came up towards the
window this fireball bright is the sun oh it is much brighter it's like a stove if you can imagine
that turning on the stove is kind of like bright reddish orange but neither the heat nor the force
broke through the windows that were right next to the impact site the pentagon's new windows cost
10 thousand dollars a piece no one has counted how many lives they saved if i was sitting in
the same window on the unrenovated part of the the pentagon i probably wouldn't have survived it
today lee eby's team has finished tearing down the section that they had just put up
400 000 square feet so on the order of 10 percent of the pentagon is gone
and there goes another half a little bit more that's correct yeah about uh unless less than
10 percent of the building is being taken down this was the pentagon then but look at it now
already the new pentagon is rising these steel rods that will support the new columns are being
sunk into the same old pilings september 11th will always be an essential date for the pentagon
it was september 11 1941 that ground was broken for the building and on september 11
2002 they intend to open the new section what's it going to look like when you have it finished
you know what it looked like before that's what it's going to look like again exactly
they're already pulling the limestone out of the same indiana quarry of 60 years ago in mississippi
the supercomputers are analyzing the september 11th attack to improve the defenses even more and
john yates has already been told that he will be moving back into the very same office it's
a testament to the to the work that the people in the renovation did in the in the engineers
and you know if it hadn't been done if there had been no structural hardening
i can't imagine what the death and destruction would be it just would be it would have been more
catastrophic than what it is ten times hundred times worse and you would have been in that number
i don't ask why anymore i just say thank you