Canadian ex-pat not scared, but upset about Brussels attacks
Posted Mar 22, 2016 10:06 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s been an upsetting day.
Those are the words of a Canadian who has been living in Brussels for the past 18 years after bombs are set off at the airport and along the subway line, killing at least 30.
“I’m not too scared but it’s emotional to watch an airport that I’ve been in and out of so many times lying on the ground bleeding,” said Wendy Deyell. “At this time it’s more emotional and it hits home in that way.”
Deyell lives between the airport and the subway stop where the attacks happened.
She says there’s been a steady stream of emergency vehicles outside her home and the air has been filled with the sound of sirens.
The streets are also unusually congested with cars and people walking, because the transit system is shut down.
Deyell says getting information, even for people living in the small city, can be a challenge.
“Because it’s the head of the EU and NATO, and so many corporate headquarters, there’s something like a quarter-of-a-million people who live here who don’t speak French or Dutch, and of course all the news reports and TV stations locally use those two languages,” she says, explaining she tries to translate and post the information to Facebook groups of ex-pats so everyone can get those critical, local updates.
She says people have been conscious of the heightened risk ever since the Paris attacks in November and the raids across Belgium. But she says things had calmed down.
“Most of us just went back to our normal lives and didn’t really think about it that much except for the odd news story here and there,” she said, adding there is a sense that now they’re paying the price for everything coming to a head.
Deyell explains one of the things she loves about the airport is how accessible it is.
“You don’t go through anything that would be considered abnormal security on entering the airport whereas in Turkey, Istanbul for example, you go through a metal detector before you get anywhere inside the buildings of the airport,” she says.
That’s likely to change.
