‘You could hear explosions’: Scanlon recounts Capitol riots
In her House of f ice blocked from view of the Capitol building, U.S. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-5 of Swarthmore, heard chanting and explosions outside Wednesday and then moved furniture to blockade her door as her own building was placed in lockdown because of the ensuing riots.
When the Capitol building was breached, Scanlon was preparing for the Pennsylvania electoral count in her office in the Longworth House Office Building, which does not face the Capitol.
“We had been preparing for the inevitable challenge to the Pennsylvania electors,” the second-term lawmaker explained, adding that she had been meeting with Pennsylvania representatives and staff virtually to prepare for the debate that was coming later in the day.
She had been watching the House floor on CSPAN. The alphabetical count only got as far as Arizona when it became clear things were going wrong.
Suddenly, her phone and computer were deluged with photos and texts. Then, she received a notification that some of the buildings were being evacuated.
“I was not one of them,” Scanlon said. “We were trying to find out what was going on. You could definitely hear chanting. You could hear explosions outside detonating.”
Her building was then placed on lockdown.
“I’ve never been on lockdown before and I never want to be again,” Scanlon said. A teacher colleague who had been placed on lockdown several times started texting her telling her what to do.
“I appreciated her advice,” the congresswoman said. “I rearranged a lot of furniture to lock the doors. I did everything I could to get prepared and follow the rules. Obviously, it was really surreal. People have a flight or fight instinct, I tend to err on fight.”
There had been some hints of trouble brewing before the riots.
Scanlon said Congress was aware that six or seven states were going to be challenged and members were also were familiar with President Donald Trump’s incendiary tactics.
“We knew from the activities of his supporters that there could be violence,” she said. “I brought food and clothing for two days thinking that once I got here I might not be able to leave. The surprise was that the Capitol was overrun.”
From the position in her office, Scanlon said she didn’t have a clear picture of the events unfolding.
“I could see mayhem,” she said. And, she said she also saw bus loads of police and National Guard responding to the scene.
In the meantime, scores of people from every stage of her life were checking in on her. She wanted to respond to them as much as possible, as well as assure her husband and children that she was ok.
“It was hard to come by information,” Scanlon said, adding that her focus was returning to session to cast the vote, which did occur in the early morning hours of Thursday after the Capitol had been cleared of the rioters, after the smoke had cleared from the pandemonium.
Scanlon paused, reflecting on the people who died, the Capitol police who suffered concussions and broken noses and the Congressional staffers, most in the early 20s, who remained on the floor at 1 a.m. with red eyes and in shock, in a place where, just hours earlier, a bookcase was the barrier between the American government and insurgents.
It illustrated clearly the danger of people in positions of power disseminating misinformation and undermining a free election in the middle of a pandemic, she said.
“It took a sledgehammer to a peaceful transfer of power,” Scanlon said.
That’s why Scanlon has joined scores of other representatives and senators in calling for Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare Trump unfit for office. In addition, on Thursday, she co-sponsored a resolution to have Trump impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors by “willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States.”
“It is not a banana republic,” the congresswoman said. “It is a democracy. If you disagree with something, you run for office ... This is not how we conduct government.”