Landed passengers escorted through bare airport after Brussels blast
'It's your family, it's your blood,' cousin says of 'pretty disturbing' Brussels airport blast
As Heather Talbot was led through the Brussels airport, she told her parents it was like the whole place had been abandoned.
"As they walked through, there were tables with cups of coffee and some food and … bags as well, just left there because everyone had been told to just get out immediately," Brian Talbot, Heather's father, told CBC News minutes after he had a chance to talk to his daughter for the first time since explosions rocked the airport in Brussels.
Heather Talbot is moving back to Canada after teaching English in South Korea for seven years, her father said. Her flight from Prague landed just before 8 a.m. local time, and just minutes before the deadly explosions inside the airport.
Brian Talbot is from Creemore, Ont. but currently lives in Longueuil, Que. He said Heather and her fellow passengers were not immediately told what had happened. Their plane was held on the tarmac for two hours before officials walked them through the airport.
When she learned of the attack, Heather borrowed another passenger's phone.
"She put a quick note on Facebook saying she was OK and that's when we started Googling to find out what was happening," Brian Talbot said.
Heather is now billeted in a recreation centre near the airport where she will spend the night, her father said. That's where she was finally able to Skype her parents.
'This is happening to my family'
Heather's cousin, Jason McDougall of Hanover, Ont., saw her Facebook post and immediately started watching the news.
"To see the pictures and the images and to know your cousin was right there was pretty disturbing," he told CBC News.
"When you see it on the news, you feel bad for the people, it's like, 'Wow, those poor people, they must be going through a hard time.' But now it's, wow, this is happening to my family and these people are trying to kill my family," he said.
"You feel an anger on a level that wasn't there before because it's your family, it's your blood, and you're concerned for them."
Heightened security
The images emerging from the attacks Tuesday in Brussels were shocking to Scott Dickie, a Kitchener teacher who was just in Brussels over the March Break.
During their trip, he said they noticed more security including sniffer dogs in train stations, but the police were friendly and not intimidating. He said there was also a European Union conference going on at the time, which may have also been why there was heightened security.
But Dickie said he felt completely safe while he was travelling in Brussels even after a shoot-out between police and Salah Abdeslam – the suspect in the Paris attacks – happened about 20 minutes from his hotel.
"The whole time we were there, it was completely safe. They had the shoot-out on the Friday with the first terrorist when they had gone to the flat and killed him and then they had arrested the other two the next day. That was within 20 minutes of our hotel. You couldn't hear any of the explosions, you couldn't really hear any of the sirens," Dickie said.
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He said he and his girlfriend went for a run the next day near where Abdeslam had been arrested.
"Everyone was out on the streets as if life was normal and you wouldn't have known that one of the most wanted terrorists in Europe was arrested the day before," he said.