I got my first glimpse of the Echelon Building in north Austin about about 12:30 pm central time. The building was still smoldering, though the fire was just about out by then. For people not familiar with Austin, this building sits at the intersection of U.S. Highway 183 and the Mopac expressway (named for the Missouri-Pacific railroad, whose route it parallels). I wouldn't have gone near there, but life goes on and in this case I had to pick my three year-old son up from daycare. As I reached the top of the flyover entrance ramp I saw the building, maybe a half-mile away. I could see the smoke and first responder crews. The Echelon is a modern, glass-enclosed, frankly generic office building, and the side where Joe Stack's plane hit was nothing but gaping windowpanes bleeding debris.

I keep thinking: It could have been so much worse. One of the injured was a driver who had the bad luck to be at the wrong place on the highway at the wrong time; what if Stack had dove into the Echelon building just a couple hours earlier? The intersection where the building stands has stop and go traffic till about 9 am and the death toll could have been much, much worse. And within a mile or two of the crash site are hundreds of houses, busy big box stores and supermarkets. What if Stack had missed, even by a little? Or wanted a bigger body count, like Tim McVeigh? What if, what if, what if?

One of those supermarkets is where I shop regularly, and wouldn't you know tonight I had to go get groceries? I could smell the subtle tang of smoke still in the air when I got out of the car. My cashier hadn't been working when Stack crashed his plane, but thought it was miraculous that no one (as far as we yet know) inside the Echelon Building was killed. "When someone's determined to die, they're capable of anything," he said. My bagger was worried that a copycat might try the same thing at The University of Texas, where his girlfriend goes to school.

And me? I'd have just rather stayed in tonight. Driving very near the building, it looked even worse than I thought. The video and wire service photos don't  really do it justice.

But I had to get some groceries, and life goes on.    

UPDATE: IRS employee Vernon Hunter is still unaccounted for, according to Hunter's family. Two bodies have been recovered (one presumably Stack's), but names have not, as of 9 am CST, been officially released.