There Are Hundreds Of Terror Survivors Stranded In A Belgian Warehouse
48 hours after the attacks, survivors of the Brussels airport bombing are left unsure just when they’ll be able to finally go home, trapped in a defiant city and unsure of what’s next.
Ryan Broderick / BuzzFeed News
BRUSSELS — Since suicide bombers struck Brussels' main airport on Tuesday, the Brabanthal warehouse, just 23km away, has had the feel of a hectic departures lounge.
People sit clutching printouts of their journey plans. Others huddle around electricity booths charging their phones. Tannoy announcements blare out requests every few minutes for passengers to present themselves at makeshift airline help desks.
They are not sure when they will be able to leave. Hundreds have been stranded at the warehouse, normally used for storing goods due for export, for more than 24 hours as they, along with the wider city, try to make sense of the twin attacks that struck Brussels on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and injuring at least 200 more. All were inside the departures terminal at Brussels airport when the bombers struck.
They had been due to board flights to cities as far afield as New Delhi, Houston, London, and Detroit. Now they sit slumped on chairs scattered across a windowless room, fed by Red Cross staff in high-vis jackets, who hand out bread rolls and orange juice.
Charles Donaldson had been due to board a flight home to Michigan after visiting his girlfriend when the suicide bombers hit.
"I was talking to the manager of a coffee shop, when all of a sudden, I hear this noise. It sounds like a car bumping into another car," Donaldson told BuzzFeed News. He spoke energetically and fast. "I didn't know it was the bomb upstairs going off. Then less than a few minutes later, here comes our explosion, people screamed and ran, and I thought OK, here we go, we're in a war zone."
"When the bomb went off, the ceiling started to come down. I walked through the broken glass with pipes hanging down, the glass walls shattered. I turned around, and I saw the backpack that I think the bomb was in – I knew what it was, it was like a bomb the Boston bomber had. I pointed it out to the officer – I said, 'There is your bomb right there,' and all of a sudden, police yelled, 'Run, go, get out of here.'"
For many in the warehouse, relief at escaping the terror attacks unhurt was being replaced by growing frustration at being stranded with no access to their personal belongings, showers, or information on how long they'd be forced to stay. People had been warned by airlines that they could be forced to stay for the rest of the week if Brussels Airport remained shut. Some began making alternative travel plans to get out of Brussels, paying vast sums for taxis to take them out of Belgium to alternative airports in neighbouring countries.
Yet even as patience grew thin, there were small gestures of camaraderie and support.
"Last night, young mothers with babies, they were crying," Dibdi Shah, a 58-year-old grandmother, told BuzzFeed News. She had been in the airport to board a transit flight from India to her home in the US. "But we told them it's OK. 'We are all here together, why are you so nervous? It will be OK.'"
"We were told to leave everything behind; we have no bags, no medicine," she said. "Some people don't even have their passports – they just ran. We also haven't showered; we don't have any clothes. There's just too many people here now. I really don't think they were prepared for something like this."
Rossalyn Warren