Renovations at the Pentagon saved hundreds, or possibly thousands of lives on September 11, 2001, said James Schwartz, a former fire official for the city of Arlington reports Scott McCaffrey, in Inside NOVA.
Due to the construction, terrorists flew American Airlines Flight 77 into a largely unoccupied section of the Pentagon’s E-ring on the morning of September 11, 2001, killing 59 people on the plane and 125 on the ground. The plane ripped through three of the Pentagon’s five concentric rings. Had the area been occupied, as many as 3,000 to 5,000 people could have been in the line of the plane.
Roughly 26,000 people work in the Pentagon daily.
