From Corporate Counsel

It’s been a strange day here in New York. Reading about the attacks in Brussels, and seeing some of the early photographs, inevitably brought back memories of September 11, 2001. Some of us also thought about our reporting of events back then. And we decided to try to bring our readers some coverage of these new attacks that also seem momentous.

We asked our staff to try to locate sources in Belgium who could give us a sense of the aftermath. We posted an article by Sue Reisinger this afternoon that included a vivid account described by a Microsoft lawyer who lives there.

By complete coincidence, we also found ourselves in touch by email with a well-known columnist for CorpCounsel.com who was trapped all day in the Brussels airport. We had emailed Alexandra Wrage, president of the antibribery organization TRACE, who had written an expert article for us. We were sending back her piece so that she could review our edits.

Minutes later came this response: “I am actually still in lockdown at the Brussels airport.   (I have been here since before the explosions – so a long day.) While I have a lot of time on my hands, I have limited IT.   Can this wait until tomorrow?”

Needless to say, it could wait. We asked if she was okay. Then we asked if she was willing to write us about her experience, so that we could include it in our planned dispatch. A few minutes later, she wrote again.

“I don’t have all that much to say,” she began. “I’ve been fairly isolated most of the time. I heard the noise, although I certainly didn’t understand what it was. More powerful was the smell of the smoke.

“People behaved exceptionally well in the aftermath – orderly and courteous. I have heard words like ‘terror’ and ‘chaos,’ but certainly didn’t witness that, although I was not at the center of things.

“The only truly nerve wracking moment for me,” she continued, “was when I was at the airport hotel several hours later. They herded everyone into a conference room and urged people to move to the very back because there might be an explosion. Much was lost in the translation! It turned out that the bomb squad had been called in to do a controlled explosion of something suspicious.”

Over time, she said, the mood at the airport—at least where she was—changed.

“People were very subdued initially, but hours and hours of waiting takes the edge off and people soon began to chat and introduce themselves.” She hastened to add: “To be clear – I wasn’t in direct danger and I didn’t see the immediate aftermath, just the flurry of police and soldiers. Most of the day was spent waiting to hear when we could leave the airport. I am still waiting!”

We wished her a safe an expeditious continuation of her journey. “I am certainly safe,” she replied. “It’s the most heavily armed spot in Europe right now. But ‘expeditious’ would be welcome!”

Later we contacted a young reporter we know in Brussels named Julie Lamfalussy. We asked her to contact local businesses and report the mood she found there. She called three friends who helped give us a sense of the day. This is what she wrote:

In the streets of the European district in Brussels, the tension was palpable this afternoon. It seemed that every minute an ambulance was passing by. The mood was weird, with scores of soldiers in the streets, even more than at Christmas time when Belgium was on high alert [following the attacks in Paris].

Marie-Noëlle Remue is a management assistant at an investment company in the European district. She narrowly escaped the explosion in the subway, which she takes every morning to go at work. “At 9:05, I was going out the station,” she says. “And at 9:10, the first explosion happened. I could have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. It makes me think about it a lot.”

IMAGE: People walk away from the broken windows at Zaventem Airport in Brussels after an explosion on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead.

Photo: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

For more on this story go to: http://www.corpcounsel.com/id=1202752838023/Brussels-Dispatch-an-Airport-Lockdown-an-Empty-Restaurant-a-Jihadism-Conference#ixzz43qrc5oMx