Overview: On the morning of 11 September 2001, Middle Eastern terrorists hijacked four passenger airliners along the east coast of the United States, one of which they flew into the Pentagon. The crash, ensuing fire, and smoke killed 125 military personnel, Department of Defense civilians, and contractors in the Pentagon in addition to those on the plane. For hundreds of the building's occupants, the period after the crash was a struggle to help themselves and coworkers escape and survive. Two days after the attack, the U.S. Army Center of Military History began an extensive project to document the historic event through oral history interviews. Published for the incident's tenth anniversary, Then Came the Fire is an anthology of excerpts from those interviews. This collection highlights the personal accounts of participants who witnessed some aspect of the events in the Pentagon that day: the survivors, some of whom were injured; policemen; firefighters; medical personnel; observers; others involved in the rescue and recovery efforts; and building occupants who began picking up the pieces.