Virginie Bay got up early Tuesday morning and headed for the Arts-Loi metro station in Brussels.
There had already been an explosion at the Brussels airport and the city was beginning to buzz with the news. Bay, 36, kept walking to the Arts-Loi station, which is just down the street from the U.S. Embassy, the French Embassy and one stop away from the Maelbeek station. She didn’t want to be late for her job interview.
Bay descended the Arts-Loi station stairs and leaned against a wall to wait for her train.
BOOM!!
Bay looked up. The wall behind her back vibrated so hard it seemed to throb. The ceiling above her began to fracture and rain concrete pebbles and dust onto her head. The air pressure dropped, followed by a rush of air.
“Help there is a bomb in Arts-Loi,” she texted her sister, Nathalie Bay, 29.
But the bomb had gone off not in Arts-Loi. It had gone off just six blocks away at the Maelbeek station closer to the French Embassy. The dust across Virginie’s head was testament to the force of the explosion.
The Bay sisters told their story to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in their city. Nathalie translated for her sister, Virginie, who speaks French. The Bays have relatives in Atlanta.
Virginie said she raced back up the stairs to the street. As she ascended, “military” officers were descending, yelling for everyone to get out of the station as quickly as possible, but “not to run.” Once Bay got away from the station, Nathalie was calling.
“She was crying,” Nathalie said. “I told her to catch a cab and get to my house as fast as she could, but there were no cabs. I told her to keep moving and to stay away from the American Embassy and the French Embassy because they are right there and we didn’t know what was going to happen. I told her to stay away from tunnels and big buildings. You never know if it was a simultaneous attack or not. It was chaos.”
Once Virginie got to her sister’s apartment, they started watching the news. Eventually, Nathalie turned off the television. She could see her sister getting more upset.
“They were repeating themselves and showing the same pictures,” Nathalie said. “There were so many rumors circulating — we don’t know what’s true or not.”
The sisters were just trying to stay calm as evening began to fall in a city that was frozen with fear and uncertainty.
“She was able to take a nap after a while, but I can tell she was frightened,” Nathalie said. “Physically, she is fine. Psychologically, she is shaken.”
A loud bang, then Brussels comes to a halt
Stephane Mertens heard a loud bang outside his home in Brussels Tuesday morning. He wasn’t sure where it came from. Then he saw two emergency vehicles race by. Then came the radio reports about the terrorist bombings in the airport and the subway station, the one Mertens sometimes passes through. It’s just a five-minute walk from his home.
Mertens, a retired translator for the Belgium Parliament whose brother lives in Atlanta, considered his own mortality as he described what he was seeing. A police helicopter was hovering overhead, he said, and people were still trapped in the subway nearby. Troops were deploying across the city.
“It’s very sad news but I am afraid it is the not the last time,” Mertens said glumly. “Brussels won’t be the only city in Europe where this is going to happen.”
The authorities, he said, asked people to stay indoors in Belgium as they responded to the attacks.
“Brussels is a dead city right now,” he said. “No traffic at all. No public transportation. No trains. No buses. No taxis. Nothing. Brussels Airport is closed.”
Mertens didn’t think the timing of the attacks was a coincidence, coming just days after Parks attack suspect Salah Abdeslam was arrested in a dramatic raid in Brussels.
“Some people say it is a revenge action for what the police did,” Mertens said. “But we are not sure about that. It could be an independent action from… ISIS. We don’t know. It is too early now to make a final statement about that. But everybody is on alert.”
“It is not the first time,” he continued. “Remember Paris? Remember Madrid? Next time it could be Amsterdam or Berlin. I guess that ISIS is trying to hit all European countries participating in the actions in Syria and Iraq.”
The evacuation of the Brussels Airport went “very orderly,” he added. “There was no panic,” he said. “The whole airport is empty right now. The security services are doing a search to discover whether there are still bombs in the compound, whether there are possible terrorists roaming around.”
‘I guess nowhere is safe’
Mertens’ younger brother, Anton, is an immigration attorney based in Atlanta and the chairman of the Brussels Sister City Committee for Atlanta’s Sister Cities Commission. Anton — who grew up in Brussels, got his law degree at Mercer University and is now a U.S. citizen – said he learned of the attacks watching the televised news Tuesday morning. He was in Puerto Rico, celebrating his wife’s birthday.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” he said. “My wife and kids and I are supposed to go in July. We postponed a trip from Christmas because of what happened before in Paris (during the Nov. 13 terrorist massacre.) And now it is happening in Brussels. I guess nowhere is safe.”
‘We’re in shock right now’
The kids knew something was wrong. Brandon Bizzell sat them down to explain: terrorists had struck at the airport and train station. The children, 9 and 11, nodded.
Still, said Bizzell, a former Gwinnett County deputy now living outside Brussels, “it was a tough conversation to have.” He’s angry that he had to.
Bizzell, who left Gwinnett nearly four years ago, lives in Waterloo, not far from the site where the Emperor Napoleon met with defeat in 1815. It was a career move: his wife got a job promotion too good to pass up. They’ve enjoyed life overseas.
Now, said Bizzell, the bombings have taken some of the luster off their expatriate lives.
“I’m sad – sad and angry at the same time,” Bizzell said. “I don’t want to live in fear. That’s what they want.”
With the airport and trains idled, said Bizzell, Belgium waits, and wonders. “Basically, we’re in shock right now,” Bizzell said. “People are concerned about what might be coming next.”
An ominous text message
Patricia Kalmeijer, a Belgium native who now works as a Realtor in Atlanta, got a text message from her husband at 4:11 a.m. Tuesday. He was away in Brussels on business and wanted to let her know he was OK.
“I am fine – my travel was scheduled for tomorrow,” he told her.
She responded: “WHAT???? I know nothing… Should I be in panic mode?”
Then she glanced at an email she got from a Belgian newspaper. The news of the terror bombings was there. Kalmeijer, a U.S. citizen who writes a blog for the Belgian community around Atlanta, was terrified. Her mother, mother-in-law and a brother still live in the Brussels area.
“It is kind of terrifying that Belgium is under attack like that — the fact also that our airport has been the target,” she said. “It is terrible.”
‘They are not going to keep me sitting down’
Her husband, Jan-Paul, was working about 20 minutes outside of Brussels, where he is helping European companies interested in doing business in the U.S. He was listening to the news on the radio. But details were scarce.
“It is constantly on the radio here,” said Jan-Paul, who specializes in international business development. “They give very little information on the real details — what is behind it — because they don’t want to compromise the police work that is ongoing.”
The anxiety was palpable in Brussels, he added.
“Right now, everybody is really extremely tense,” he said. “I have had a couple of business meetings today and it is the only thing people talk about. Everybody is horrified.”
“But at the same time, everybody is saying, ‘We shouldn’t stand back. We need to confront this and unite,’” he continued. “And that is what all the politicians are communicating on the radio and television.”
With the Brussels Airport closed, Jan-Paul was about to start figuring out how he was going to get back to Atlanta this week. He insisted he wasn’t going to let the terrorists stop him from carrying on.
“There is no thought in my mind that I would not travel,” he said. “They are not going to keep me sitting down.”
A global attack
Jan-Paul’s brother-in-law, Jean-Simon Cornélis, lives in the Brussels suburbs and works near the airport.
“The situation is really crazy,” he said. “It is much more than Belgium that was attacked today. The fact that it is such a central place — it is such a symbol of democracy that was attacked today. It is a global attack.”
‘It’s like a war zone here’
The phone rang before David Hull could leave for work. His partner was on the line, complaining that traffic in Brussels was heavier than usual. To make things worse: a black plume of smoke rose over the airport.
“Things went downhill from there,” Hull said.
The fire, the world learned, stemmed from a bombing attack. Then a second bomber targeted a Brussels train stop — the same stop, said Hull, adjacent to the high school where his partner’s children attend classes.
After that, he said, “the city shut down.”
For Hull, a University of Georgia law graduate who’s lived in Belgium since 1983, the bombings are a reminder that no place is safe, that terror respects no one. “They (bombings) were in places where people often go,” he said. “It hits close to home.”
By evening, said Hull, commerce in Brussels had stopped. Planes were grounded, the trains still.
“It’s like a war zone here,” said Hull, as he prepared to leave his office. “We’ve got soldiers standing on every corner. It’s disconcerting.”
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