WASHINGTON – Something was not right inside the Senate chamber.
Below the press desk where I stood, looking at the room like an aquarium, Vice President Mike Pence had just been taken outside without explanation.
“We have an emergency,” yelled a policeman with a neon banner that appeared in the middle of the camera. Officers and doormen ran around, slamming and locking the huge wooden doors. There were screams of panic for the senators to move further into the room.
Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, raised his hands in exasperation.
“This is what you have achieved, folks,” he shouted, referring to about a dozen Republican colleagues who were challenging the victory of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., which Congress was meeting to confirm.
Now everything was stopped and I had about 10 seconds to decide whether to run or close. I stayed, deciding that I should keep my eyes on the senators I was there to cover, no matter what came next.
“Senate being blocked,” I texted my editor.
A minute later: “This is scary.”
Senator Patrick Leahy, an avid amateur photographer, took some pictures. Senator Amy Klobuchar blurted out that shots may have been fired. A silence fell over the room and sirens sounded outside.
In an instant, Capitol police officers started leading lawmakers to the Senate pit and moving them through the back door.
“It is us?” someone near me shouted from the balcony. The police shouted for us to go to the basement.
I ran to get my laptop and dove with a handful of reporters three floors below, where a lone officer held up a pair of doors that led to the Capitol Visitor Center, built after the September 11, 2001 attacks, as a sort of fortress. underground. He had also been violated.
Looking to the left, we saw a stream of senators snaking ahead in the narrow underground tunnels that connect the sprawling Capitol campus.
There was Senator Mitch McConnell, 78, the majority leader and a polio survivor, practically burdened by his security detachment, hands under his arms to support him as they went. The man in the body of Senator Chuck Schumer, from New York, held the suit tightly behind his neck. Trying to keep the mood light, Senator Roy Blunt, from my home state of Missouri, joked that perhaps the interruption would speed up the debate.
When we rose above the ground, we were in a space that I knew well after years of working on Capitol Hill, but officers begged us not to tell them details of our location. We would be there for about four hours. Later, after the Capitol was cleaned and protected, we retraced our steps, along with auxiliaries who carried two mahogany boxes containing the certificates of the Electoral College.
When Congress resumed its count and the night turned to dawn, I found myself wandering alone over a frighteningly silent Capitol, studying the remains of an abandoned occupation. The ornate tile floor, one of the building’s treasures, was coated with a powder residue from fire extinguishers and pepper spray.
The window overlooking the speaker’s lobby, where I spent hours cornering lawmakers, was shattered. Banks were overturned. Soft drinks filled the corridors. On the first floor, I found a handful of syringes and a defibrillator worn on someone – I wondered who – and left it behind. –Nicholas Fandos, Congress reporter
Facing a crowd and the police
I could hear the protesters on the first floor on the Senate side of the Capitol, so I went down the stairs, following the noise. They arrived at the Ohio Clock Corridor, outside the chamber where the senators were meeting, and shouted that they wanted to enter. I was shocked that they managed to get in and I thought that would be the big moment of the day: the small group of protesters having violated the Capitol building.
I was wrong.
I looked down the corridor to the Rotunda and saw what looked like a hundred people running, shouting and pulling up a podium. I took a lot of pictures and then went to the ceremonial doors of the Rotunda, where a single policeman protected the door against a crowd of hundreds outside.
The crowd gathered and ran to the officer, forcing the door open, and people entered. I ran upstairs to stay out of the crowd’s way and get a better position to document what was going on. Suddenly, two or three men in black surrounded me and demanded to know who I worked for.
Taking my press pass, they saw that my identity said The New York Times and were very angry. They threw me on the floor, trying to get my cameras out. I started screaming for help as loud as I could. Nobody came. People just watched. At this point, I thought I could be killed and no one was going to stop them. They took one of my cameras off me, broke one lens on the other and ran away.
After that, I was hyperventilating, not knowing what to do. I knew I needed to get away from the crowd and hide my broken camera so I wouldn’t be targeted again. I ran to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s suite, but people were vandalizing her office, so I kept walking. Walking to his west-facing balcony towards the National Mall, I saw a mass of people covering the inaugural stage. I found a place to hide my camera there, so I watched the crowd from the balcony and filmed from my phone, which was all I had.
“This will be the beginning of a civil war revolution,” said a man beside me.
At that point, the Capitol Police started distributing pepper spray or tear gas, and I knew I needed to find a place to hide. I didn’t know where I could go, since I no longer had my credentials in Congress. I ran to the third floor, opened the first door I saw and hid in a corridor. I called my husband, who told me to stay calm and look for a safer place.
But then the police found me. I told them that I was a photojournalist and that my pass had been stolen, but they didn’t believe me. They drew their weapons, aimed them and shouted for me to kneel. While I was lying on the floor, two other photojournalists entered the hall and started shouting “She is a journalist!”
The police told us it was not safe to leave and helped us find a room to protect ourselves. The other two photographers grabbed my hands and said there would be no problem and that I would stay with them so that they could answer for me. I will never forget your kindness at that moment. –Erin Schaff, team photographer
Shelter in the House
A little after 2:15 pm, advisers in the City Council began to quietly alert us to prepare for shelter. I thought about how stupid I was to have left my bag on my desk on the opposite side of the Capitol, and I borrowed someone’s computer charger just in case.
I watched a security detachment lift Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, off the ground with other members of the leadership. The police began to close the gallery doors.
“Now we have individuals who broke into the Capitol building,” said a Capitol Police officer who took the podium. Stay cool and calm, he instructed.
I kept updating my story, needing something to keep me distracted. Lawmakers were shouting. It didn’t seem real.
Tear gas was deployed at the Rotunda, a policeman said, and everyone needed to grab an emergency hood under the chair and prepare to put it on.
Suddenly, it seemed that every lawmaker had a backpack in his hand, pulling out aluminum bags and emergency hoods, and staff members handed them out to reporters.
I could hear knocking outside, so I crouched behind a table, the reality of the camera being violated sinking. I tore the bag, struggling to remove the hood, a kind of hybrid gas mask with a tarpaulin, which made a loud humming noise and had a flashing red light. I peered over the table and could see Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona and a veteran, without a jacket, standing in a chair and shouting instructions on how to wear the masks.
The officers pulled a huge wooden chest like an improvised barricade in front of the main doors of the Chamber of Deputies – those through which Vice President Mike Pence had just passed, those through which they had loaded the chests with electoral certificates. The floor was empty, except for the advisers shouting for everyone in the gallery to leave.
I grabbed my laptop, my phone and this hood buzzing, grabbed everything against my chest and went up to the back of the gallery, where a line was forming to leave the camera. There was a handrail separating the area into sections and we struggled to climb. What’s faster? Bending down? Climbing? While planning my escape, I heard shouts of “Get down!” Everyone fell to the floor.
Face down behind an auditorium chair, I could see some officers with guns pointed at the barricaded chamber doors. Representative Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, was trying to reason with whoever was knocking on the door. I started to think about how I really wasn’t protected behind this chair. Was it worth taking a few steps to see if the TV equipment provided more coverage? But would I be more exposed if people started shooting? I stood still.
I sent some “I love you” messages, otherwise frozen on the floor. I didn’t know what could happen. I just wanted them to know. —Emily Cochrane, Congress reporter