JFK evacuation!
(this is not about speedskating, but worth mentioning due to the world we live in)
Tuesday evening, about 6:45pm at the JFK airport in NYC. Someone “runs through” the airport security checkpoints, eludes the grasp of TSA personnel, and disappears into a very crowded terminal.
They lock all the doors & post guards, stop every flight, and no one can go in or out.
For 90 minutes grim looking armed teams of every description sweep through the terminal.
Then they decided to evacuate JFK! So several thousand people, including your humble narrator, get to stand outside for 3 hours, with a cluster of helicopters hovering over us.
It was a nice evening (maybe 50 degrees) and I had a thick leather jacket, so I was fine, just bored.
But I suddenly understood in that very brutal way, how truly vulnerable the very young, very old, and unhealthy are during large-scale social weirdness. There are several babies hidden under the coats of the people sitting here.
In the grand scale of things, this was an inconvenience, but I hope it’s not an omen towards continuing freaky screwed up world-wide karma. After my experience on the train, I am suspecting the population of hateful people might be reaching critical mass.
After 3 hours standing outside the terminal, they slowly let us back in. About 30% of the flights were cancelled outright.
As I walked to my plane, past locked stores, kiosks, and empty airport bars, I see a TV playing CNN towards the empty terminal. I wanted to see our little “incident” flash by in the news ticker on the bottom of the screen. There would have been some truths of our modern existence in that.
Although rumors were rampant among the crowd during the event, according the NY Newsday, here is what happened.
I didn’t get home till 4am, and I still feel like crap… bleh…
Filed under: on the road
Guess you can tell me more about it when I see you 24 hours from now. Glad you’re home safely!
From the story I saw, it was a guy who went out to have a cigarette. Filthy habit!
Wow, Andrew…and it sounds like nobody really knows what happened. I recently told you I usually don’t worry, but one of the things I do think about, without being able to do anything about it, is that more and more everyday people seem to be doing horrible things and just don’t care about others. Not much more to say…but I am glad you were surrounded by so many more well-intentioned people and it turned out ok.
first you almost get de-railed, and now this? i dunno andrew, i’d stay away from landmarks and public transportation. perhaps the international masters skating community is trying to off you for some reason? I’d sleep with one eye open if i were you.
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what i’m thinking right now is how did that guy get on the plane to fly to Albany?? they didn’t cancel the flight or anything, that’s what scares me.. what if he had a weapon. c’mon people!!
C’mon people don’t you realize realize all this stuff at the airport is Security Theater…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater
I remember boarding a plane with some tools for skating and they wouldn’t let me take on an adjustable wrench but then I took on my T Allen wrench which was thin and long. If that wasn’t a weapon I don’t know what was and a time before that in the last 6 years I had a pocket knife on me and got thru with that?????? Keep up the good work!!!
Hey Andrew glad you are ok. As a news photog my mental health exercise is thinking how I should go about covering a story should such and such happen. I have done it all my life and it has served me well however I can’t get the images out of my head of what might come or nothing. I am just trying to stay alive long enough to film the apocalypse or not.