I switched from monitor to monitor:

… large pieces of the memorial were blown several hundred yards, crashing into the reception center …

… limousine and taxi drivers abandoned their passengers, but a Pakistani Lyft driver had heroically carried an elderly female passenger more than half a mile to safety …

For some reason, camera operators at all three sites decided to focus on abandoned clothing. Shoes especially.

… floodwaters reached the Gulf, carrying tons of debris …

… children were among the missing at Pearl Harbor …

… terrorists inside the tunnel had engaged those troops Wrightman had initially sent to New York to enforce federal immigration policies. It was believed all of the terrorists were killed in the series of explosions that had rocked the tunnel, although it was not known if those blasts had been caused by Homeland Security forces or if they had blown themselves up to avoid capture.

Did they get them all? I wondered. No way of knowing for sure. The problem we’d faced in the desert was how to identify the bad actors who slipped away with fleeing survivors. It was frustrating as hell, and we never solved it. At her press conference early that evening NYPD commissioner Rosemary Rogers admitted, “While we believe all of the attackers are dead, as I’m sure everybody understands it is a very confusing situation. To allow our people to do their jobs, we are imposing a curfew on the city tonight. Beginning at nine P.M., we will stop, question, and detain if appropriate anyone on New York’s streets without proper cause. This is for your own safety, people.” Rogers reminded New Yorkers to check Twitter hourly for further information.

Gradually the breaking news morphed into features. At first we heard the uplifting miracle survival stories: A baby had been found floating in its stroller in the Pacific. A pregnant woman had been carried out of the tunnel and had given birth in an ambulance. A teenager claimed to have ridden his Jet Ski through the floodwaters. Estimates of casualties were all over the place—casualties being the acceptable term. Nobody wanted to put a number on the death toll.

I watched Howie moving around the office, reading over a shoulder, making a brief comment, laying a reassuring hand on someone’s back. Keeping control. That was no surprise. Howie Bernstein had spent four decades preparing for this day, rising from covering local schoolboard meetings to the national desk of The Washington Post. After taking his buyout, he had helped found the Pro. There was no hesitation in him; he put on his green plastic printer’s visor given to him by his former colleagues at the Post and dived into the story.

Howie had created the Pro to tell stories in human terms, focusing on those events that emotionally touched our readers. Dogs in floodwaters, he called them. We were working on a limited budget, a Velcro budget he called it, the staff consisting mostly of experienced journalists laid off by the big boys—the major newspapers, networks, and cable channels and young people willing to trade salary for opportunity. When necessary, as it would be for this story, he hired freelancers living near the site (no transportation costs!) to inject a local element.