From the Lemons-to-Lemonade Department, I managed to take yesterday's little, um, "aerial misunderstanding" and turn it into a light local sidebar.

(Thumbs up on the headline, too.)

Anyways, this is Dickie Cronkite: Meeting all your non-news news needs:

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Capps, Gallegly in agreement: Get out as quickly as possible

5/12/05
By DICKIE CRONKITE
NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT

WASHINGTON -- It began as just another busy day for Congress.

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, talked to other members on the House floor about a stem cell bill she plans to push in the coming weeks. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, quickly ate his lunch in the nearby House cloakroom, a private area for congressmen, watching a vote on a television monitor after his committee meeting.

Suddenly, Capitol police were instructing everyone in the chamber to run -- not walk -- out of the building and head as far south as possible.

A Cessna plane had entered restricted Washington airspace and wasn't responding to authorities, prompting security personnel to evacuate the White House, the Capitol and surrounding congressional offices.

The two representatives, who frequently disagree on major policy issues, were momentarily in complete agreement: They needed to leave quickly.

"All of a sudden you see the chairman come off the dais and everyone running out of the chambers and . . . into the cloakroom," Mr. Gallegly said. "Somebody knocked the sandwich out of my hand."

Mrs. Capps said, "I could hear the loud footsteps of visitors in the gallery walking down the steps toward the exits."

In a matter of minutes, thousands of staffers, visitors and members of Congress spilled out into the grassy areas below Capitol Hill. Sirens blared from a perimeter of police cars and ambulances. On the north side of the Hill, a medical helicopter occupied a main crosswalk used to head to the Capitol.

The mass evacuation briefly brought back memories of Sept. 11.

"For those of us who were here on 9/11, you don't take these things lightly," Mr. Gallegly said. "Whereas before we lived under the sacred veil that we were all untouchable, (today) you don't assume that there's not a real potential problem."

Mrs. Capps agreed. "It was a scary few minutes, but these are the times in which we live."

Both representatives walked several blocks south of the Capitol before the evacuation was canceled.

Mr. Gallegly said that while the evacuation was "very aggressive," it also happened in an orderly fashion. "It wasn't a stampede," he said. "I could see thousands of people to the south, which in and of itself was a real unsettling feeling about the potential target that made."

The plane was diverted, and the scare did not shut down Congress for long. Within two hours, the House was back to considering a bill to reduce gang violence, while the Senate debated a highway bill.


Dickie Cronkite writes from Washington, D.C., for Medill News Service. Contact him at ******@newspress.com.