Irish in Brussels: They were screaming ‘There’s a bomb’

“It was about 8am and I was sitting at the gate listening to my music when all these people started running past me. I took out my headphones and there was all this screaming. They were all screaming: ‘There’s a bomb. There’s a bomb. Run to the end of the concourse’.”

Luke Mac an Bháird is a 22-year-old Erasmus student from Ballinasloe who had arrived in the airport minutes before the bomb went off. He was caught up in the panicked evacuation and describes the experience as "terrifying". Even so, he knows he was lucky.

“ Everything was going in slow motion. I ran. The panic was crazy. I wasn’t sure if they were saying a bomb was about to go off or one had gone off already. It didn’t help that my French is terrible.”

He recalls: “The cheapest flight I could get home for the Easter was today. I arrived at the airport at 7.50am and was at my gate five minutes later. I was relaxed and at my gate just waiting for my flight to be announced when the people started running past.”

He doesn’t know if people at his gate heard the bomb blast. He didn’t because he had his headphones on. “Had I decided not to be early for my flight, if I had arrived a few minutes later I would have been caught up in it,” he says.

“We got to the end of the concourse and we just waited. We started getting conflicting messages. We were told we were to be evacuated and then we were told to stay put. Then we were told to go on to the runway. We went through an emergency exit. We had to go through this tunnel. It was packed. There was roaring and shouting.”

As more and more people pushed into the tunnel, people started to panic,” Mac an Bháird says. “From the back of the crowd someone started shouting: ‘Run Run Run. People were climbing on top of each other. It was such a confined space. We didn’t know if there was another bomb or what. It was terrifying.”

The group were on the runway for “maybe 25 minutes” before a bus came to take them to the train station and out of the airport. “But even when we were on the bus everyone was wary. We were on the bus in a holding area for about half an hour. Everyone was really nervous and there were all sorts of rumours about what was happening. All I could do was stay calm. I was lucky the train stopped close to my apartment.”

It was only when he got back to his apartment that he was able to start processing what happened. “At the time everything seemed to be moving really slowly and yet really fast at the same time, if that makes any sense. I am very lucky I didn’t get more caught up in it. I have rebooked my flights and think I will be able to get home on Friday. I hope I can anyways.”