Bennett Richardson couldn’t find his Metro card on Tuesday morning, so instead of taking the subway to work he drove the mile and a half to his office in Brussels.
Richardson, who grew up in Cape Elizabeth and is a graduate of North Yarmouth Academy, found out about the explosion at the airport after he got to work at 8:30 a.m. He is executive director of advertising and business development for Politico Europe, based in Brussels, and the newsroom was a flurry of activity.
Less than an hour later, a second explosion rocked the Maelbeek metro station just a few hundred feet from his office – the same station where Richardson would have gotten off the train to go to work if he’d ridden the subway Tuesday.
Between the two terrorist attacks, believed to have been carried out by members of the Islamic State, 31 people were killed and 270 were injured.
“It’s such a bustling corridor where I work, that a strange noise doesn’t always rise to the level of concern,” Richardson, 31, said Wednesday by telephone. “We felt it, but I certainly didn’t think it was a bomb at first.”
A day after the attacks, Richardson said Brussels was pretty much on lockdown. Belgium’s capital city has been on high alert since last November’s terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, but Tuesday’s bombings heightened tensions considerably.
“(My wife and I) have never felt unsafe in Brussels before,” he said. “But these moments certainly shake you up.”
Richardson said the immediate feeling around the city after the attacks was disheartening. He said many felt relieved after the capture of Salah Abdeslam, one of the architects of the Paris attacks, this past weekend in Belgium.
“I think people felt really good about that, as though it was a representation of progress,” Richardson said. “To have this happen so soon after that, I guess that contrast is really challenging.”
Richardson and his wife, Lindsey, who is 30 and grew up in Kennebunkport, moved to Europe last July for work. He had been working at Politico’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Both had studied abroad while in college – he in France, she in Hong Kong and London – and have enjoyed living in Europe as a young married couple. He said Brussels is a nice mix of locals and expats from all over Europe and many from the U.S. as well.
“Thankfully, I didn’t know anyone who was killed or hurt,” he said. “One colleague I know was in the train behind the one that was bombed; another was in the airport not far from the explosion but wasn’t hurt. It’s terrifying.”
The police presence in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, already was significant and has increased dramatically since Tuesday’s bombings. Richardson and his wife were slated to fly back to the United States on Thursday to attend a wedding this weekend. Since they can no longer fly out of Brussels, the Richardsons are taking a train to Paris and will fly from there. He said when he was at the train station buying tickets, guards were checking everyone’s bags, no matter what size.
“There is still this big manhunt going on, so things are tense,” he said. “It’s another reminder to take steps to stay safe.”
Eric Russell can be contacted at 791-6344 or at:
Twitter: PPHEricRussell
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