On the morning of September 11, 2001, Patrick Smith walked toward a television in an office of the Pentagon, to watch the news on attacks against the World Trade Center in New York, when he heard a loud explosion.
"The wall in front of mine was twisted inwards," he recalls.
"The roof tiles and wires began to fall, then everything became black (...) and then a fireball came by the giant wall," he says.
Images like these will cross the thinking of several of the survivors on Thursday, when the first permanent memorial in the United States in commemoration of the attacks of September 11 was devoted to the 184 people who died in the Pentagon and on American Airlines Flight 77, , Which crashed against the building.
The ceremony at the headquarters of the U.S. Defense Department, attended President George W. Bush will take place exactly seven years after Al Qaeda militants who hijacked four commercial airliners and killed nearly 3,000 people.
Smith, a civilian who works for the Army, will be among the audience. He knows that is fortunate to have this possibility.
"I could hear and feel how the hair of the head and arms began to scorched by the intense heat of the flame," he said.
"If I had walked over six feet (nearly two meters), probably would not be sitting here today," he said.
Smith saw the flames from a colleague who was unable to leave and failed to help her. A co-worker came running-fire, with his clothes on fire.
Smith was thrown to the floor and went crawling from that hell. Took the hand of an injured colleague and together found a safe way out.
"She had second-degree burns and skin it was beginning to fall from the face," he said.
The memories have become less intense with the passage of time, but never disappear completely, he said.
Smith cree that the memorial at the Pentagon, a park designed by Julie Beckman and Keith Kasem, with maples and units in commemoration of each victim, is an appropriate tribute to those who died.
"They did a great job," said Smith, who served in the Army's personnel department at the time of the attack.
