Brussels attacks: Airport employee said 'we’ve never done an evacuation before' after bombers struck

US Army medic Col Chuck Helms had seen carnage before. He was in New York on 9/11, and has treated trauma victims all over the world. So when a blast ripped through Brussels Airport while he was in transit, he volunteered his services, and entered the blackened, dusty scene of the bombs that targeted the heart of Europe yesterday.

“There were a lot of people trying to help – you had the police, you had the military,” he told me. “But there was glass everywhere, so most of the military had glass in their hands, they didn’t realise that they had injuries because they were trying to assist people. There were a lot of tourniquets, a lot of people had put on tourniquets.”

I spoke to Col Helms in the outdoor cargo area of Brussels Zaventem Airport, where passengers evacuated from the terminals were milling around in confusion, casting incredulous glances to the airport’s smashed windows and trying to reach friends and family on their phones. A man sat on the floor in a blood-stained sweatshirt; others tried to keep warm after being forced out of planes into the cold air of early spring. There was disbelief at the scale and audacity of the attacks, and the chaos and confusion of security and airport staff in a country that was on high alert for a terror attack.

“We felt like a wave, you feel it in your whole body, it is like you are in water and someone jumps in the water and you feel that wave,” said Andrew Brandt, a former law enforcement officer from Arizona, who was in Terminal B, the long-haul terminal, when the bombs went off. “We were telling airport agents what we felt, that it was an explosion, then they were like ‘What?’. Then we heard: ‘Evacuate, evacuate.’ Then they say, ‘Stay where you are.’ Then ‘Evacuate, evacuate’ again, but everyone was just standing around.”

I too had been in the airport that morning – due to travel to Frankfurt for work – and passed two soldiers at the airport entrance at 7.35am. I had not given them much thought: Brussels went into lockdown last November after the Paris attacks, and tanks and troops are a common sight in public.

I briefly considered eating breakfast in the check-in area, but decided instead to pass through security towards my gate in Terminal A, a short walk from the departure lounge. So when the blasts ripped through the area half an hour later, I heard and saw nothing. But it quickly became apparent that something was wrong: I was just finishing my breakfast when a restaurant employee rushed through and told us to leave. People were confused, and wandered out of the restaurant area to the main concourse of the terminal where people board at the gates. Then a message came over the loudspeakers: “Evacuate, evacuate: this is a general notice to evacuate the airport.”

Confusion among passengers became tinged with panic when it became apparent that there would be no evacuation. Staff seemed unaware of what to do. I overheard one airport employee shrug and say to a passenger: “We’ve never done an evacuation before.” Another ushered me to a gate leading outside and told me it would open soon, but it didn’t.

No security staff, police or army showed up. Another message on the loudspeaker told everyone to stay where they were. The terminal was in lockdown. “It is the safest place to be,” another airline employee told me, as news filtered through of a bomb in the departure lounge.

Brussels had been on high terror alert for months, yet there appeared to be no plan in place to evacuate the airport in the case of an attack.

After about 45 minutes, another evacuation message came over the loudspeaker. This time some police officers and a handful of airport staff ushered the thousands of passengers down two escalators and on to the Tarmac outside. We walked past planes still filled with passengers who had not been allowed to disembark, before being told to wait for buses in a cargo area. People stood in huddles, wrapped in airline blankets waiting to be told what to do. The elderly and young children had nowhere to sit, and people simply looked bewildered as fire engines and ambulances passed with their sirens blaring.

I could see the damage to the front of the airport: windows blown out in the area through which I had walked hours before, patarolling soldiers with guns drawn. I approached a man sitting on the floor with blood on his shirt. Yassine Amrani, 38, explained that he was homeless and lived on a road that runs under the airport. But when he heard the explosion he had raced into the airport to try to help.

“I was with my friends – boom, in one second, all the people were running away. I went inside and I saw everywhere dead people and fire. I was looking for people because the ceiling had fallen on the people and you had to search for the people. One woman had a baby in her arms and kept saying ‘My baby, my baby.’ I said: ‘You have your baby in your arms and he is fine’,” he said.

Others who had been in the terminal building were trying to process what had happened, and how close they had come to being caught in the carnage.

“I was in the lounge and heard a rumbling so thought something had hit the airport,” said Josh Balser, from the US. “Then they told us to go to the end of the hallway and eventually some guy was screaming, ‘We found guns and ammunition, everybody leave your bags and exit the airport.’”

Most people followed instructions and found themselves shivering outside without coats, bags or passports. Eventually we were taken to a hangar, where water and food were provided. Finally, transit passengers who had disembarked after lengthy flights, only to spend the next frightening hours experiencing a terror attack and its aftermath, were able to rest. They laid their airline blankets on the floor and tried to sleep.