Back in 2016, dwallacewells described in vivid detail what it was like to be caught in a terrifying airport panic
People wait for the reopening of the security check at JFK Airport on August 15, 2016. Photo: Xinhua/Wang Ying/via Getty Images When the first stampede began, my plane had just landed. It started, apparently, with a group of passengers awaiting departure in John F. Kennedy Airport Terminal 8 cheering Usain Bolt’s superhuman 100-meter dash. The applause sounded like gunfire, somehow, or to someone; really, it only takes one. According to some reports, one woman screamed that she saw a gun.
There was no “they.” There was not even a “he,” no armed person turning on a crowd. But what happened at JFK last night was, in every respect but the violence, a mass shooting.
When they let us go, ten minutes later, the security guard stood at the door cautioning everyone to stay calm, but I figured she was chastising Risa for having cut in front of the woman without the passport. When we turned left out of the gate, though, the line was there to meet us. This wasn’t in passport control, or at the stairs leading down to it, but hundreds of yards closer, down the tiny hallway meant to bring us there.
The word stampede comes from the animal kingdom — gazelles running away from lions, horses running from some other threat. But there is really no other word for what happened last night at JFK, because panic turned us all into animals. And the airport, designed to contain and channel people, had never felt more like a slaughterhouse corral.
The complete breakdown was terrifyingly clear as soon as the security guards managed to stuff us back inside. The only place to go was that break room: a cinder-block bunker with one tiny door and no cell reception. It wasn’t hard to reimagine it as a perfect corral for a machine-gun killer; in fact, everyone kept imagining it, and kept telling the security guards that.
As soon as I found Risa, it felt like, they were hustling us back inside saying the runway was unsafe. Was that because shooters were out there? “I really don’t want to go back into a crowded room with all these insane people,” I said. “I just want to get out of here,” Risa said. “Can we just get to the highway somehow? Or jump in the water?” she laughed. “I think they’d shoot us,” I said. Not that I knew who “they” were. I still hadn’t seen a single proper cop.
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