AMERICA ATTACKED

Akaka, wife taken
to secure location
after attacks

The senator makes sure his
Washington staff is out of harm's
way before he departs

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By Richard Borreca, Helen Altonn
and Christine A. Donnelly
Star-Bulletin

U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka was working in the Capitol when reports of the World Trade Center attack came on television this morning.

As he and other members of Congress working in the Capitol building watched live images of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center tower, the report came in about the attack on the Pentagon.

"The Capitol police came to the office at almost the same time to evacuate everyone," Akaka spokesman Paul Cardus said. Akaka and his wife, Millie, were taken to a secure location nearby, but Cardus said Akaka waited outside with his staff, making sure they were safely gone before leaving.

"His first thoughts are with the victims and their families," Cardus said.

Akaka was among those with isle ties affected by the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Former Hawaii resident Carrie Hyunn, who lives and works in Washington as a consultant for strategic communications, said the scene was like rush hour traffic.

"The downtown area is really congested with people trying to get out of the city. A lot of government buildings are closed," said Hyunn, a Punahou School graduate who moved to Washington in 1997 as a political appointee in the Clinton administration.

"It's not chaos or anything like that, Hyunn said. "I think a lot of people are just in shock, looking to find a TV to watch this unfold. They're trying to get a sense of what the impact is."

Robert "Bo" Godfrey, former island resident who works for Constellation Financial management Co. in New York, said he spoke to an associate who works at Ernst & Young and could see the World Trade Center. "He said, 'One minute you could see the World Trade Center with a giant hole in its side. The next minute the top of the building was gone.' "

Godfrey said subway trains were running after the attack and people could get out of Grand Central Station. But he was reluctant to go into the station across from his office building.

"The irony is we had been having a discussion over the coffee pot this morning," he said. "Someone made the point that you can't really do much to defend against terrorism."

Soon after, they heard a report from Bloomberg News that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. In Hawaii, family and friends waited for word about loved ones in New York and Washington.

For Honolulu resident Malia Zimmerman it took a second for the horrific television images to register as reality, and then another instant to realize that people she loved might be in the rubble.

She immediately went to the phone, trying to reach family and friends in New York and Washington. But all the telephone circuits were busy, no matter how many times she tried. It was 4 a.m. in Honolulu, and all Zimmerman could do was hope someone would call her as she sat transfixed by television coverage of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

Finally, the calls came. A cousin who works at the Trade Center was OK, having also escaped injury in the 1993 terrorist bombing that damaged the tower. Her sister and brother-in-law, who live in lower Manhattan near the destroyed towers, were safe, on vacation in Italy. A relative who works at the White House was fine.

"So far as we can tell, family is accounted for. It's a relief. But I still have some friends who work at the Pentagon that I haven't heard from," said Zimmerman, a freelance journalist.

Zimmerman said she and her son, Michael, 6, had visited the New York City landmark on a recent visit and the boy immediately recognized it when she turned on the TV this morning.

"While we were watching the news coverage, they showed people cheering in (the Middle East) and he turned and asked 'Why would people be happy that someone got hurt?' And that's a really hard question that I don't know how to answer."