First, you hear the low rumble of the jets. Then, a piercing screech.
“You don?t know where it?s going to hit or when it?s going to hit, you just hope to God it doesn?t hit you,” Tarek Dika said. “It rattles your heart, your chest.”
Dika, a Johns Hopkins University student, was among 140 bleary-eyed evacuees to first reach U.S. soil at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport early Thursday morning after escaping airstrikes in Lebanon. The weary passengers expressed relief and gratitude to state workers after a 12-hour trip aboard a cargo ship to Cyprus ? many without food, sleep and a place to sit ? and a stop in Manchester, England, before arriving in Baltimore.
Officials said they expect about 800 more evacuees to arrive in Baltimore on as many as seven additional flights through Saturday.
The local chapter of the Red Cross and the state?s emergency response crews greeted passengers with food, cash, counseling and staff to arrange connecting flights and hotel rooms.
Several local evacuees joyfully reunited with girlfriends, children and parents. Sara Dimarco clutched the arm of her boyfriend, Prince Frederick resident Ryan Usumi, who was studying in Lebanon. Abingdon resident Sandie Choucair embraced her husband, Mohamad, who was visiting his mother in Lebanon.
Choucair said she could hear bombs in the background when she spoke to him on the phone.
“We?re just glad he?s home,” she said. “He?s very exhausted.”
But, like Dika, many who had traveled to Lebanon to visit family and attend weddings left loved ones behind.
Mohamad Barbarji took his three children to visit their grandparents when the violence erupted. The night of July 12, they awoke to the sounds of screaming planes. Barbarji said he was “ashamed” to have abandoned his parents.
Officials expected the next flight to arrive around midnight Thursday. Others were expected between 1:30 and 4 a.m. today, with another flight around 5:30 a.m., according to Christopher McCabe, secretary of the state?s Department of Human Resources.
He said all the evacuees in the first flight were able to make travel plans within two hours.
But for many, long journeys loomed ahead before they officially reached home. Melissa Plourde borrowed a cell phone to ask her father to pick her up at the Providence, R.I., airport several hours later.
“I love you,” she added quickly before handing the phone back to its owner.
Services available to repatriated Americans
» Temporary cash assistance
» Medical assistance and mental health screenings
» Hotel accommodation or short-term lodging
» Temporary day care for children traveling alone
» Telephone service
» Special services for the elderly and disabled
» Accommodation for service dogs, if needed
Source: Maryland Emergency Management Agency
