Blog Post 24.1: The Horror of the Nice Attacks

So, finally, on the Thursday, the 14th of July, on the day of the biggest French national holiday, Jour de la Bastille, I took off for Nice…

So I arrived in Nice after a long seven-hour Blablacar and met Samo and Peter at our Airbnb, which was located near the airport and at the beginning of the Promenade des Anglais.  The Promenade is 5km long and at the other end of it there is the actual city, so essentially we were located 5km from the city.

Anyways so we went to the beach in the afternoon and then retreated to our Airbnb so we could eat, shower and get ready to go out at night.  Essentially our plan was to go catch the fireworks at 10:00 PM and then there were going to be several stages set up along the beach playing music, so we were going to go and just party for a bit with the locals, and then the following day we were going to visit the city.

Of course, none of this happened.

So, to summarize this horrific experience and to emphasize how lucky the three of us are to not have been caught in the middle of this attack.

Again, we wanted to go catch the fireworks at 10 PM but we didn’t.  I was rushing my friends to leave so we could catch them but they were actually really slow.  Peter remembered that he had to take a shower at the last second and so we were delayed because of that, and Samo had forgotten his shoes in the car (don’t ask how…) and came back up 20 minutes later.  We then realized that it was around 10:20 and we had missed the majority of the fireworks, so we decided to stay in the Airbnb a bit longer and have a bottle of wine before heading out for the music sets during the night.

We had a few drinks then headed out at around 11.  Keep in mind that the attacks had happened at about 10:40 PM, but when we headed out we had no idea and we were in a good mood and looking forward to a good night.

So we start walking along the Promenade, again we were about 3-4 km from where the attacks actually happened so there was no evidence of anything from the start.  The only thing we noticed was lots of police lights in the distance and there were even some ambulances rushing down the street.

Of course, we made nothing of this, as I was convinced that there was such a strong police presence solely to maintain security and ensure nothing happens.  So we kept walking, sipping on some wine and still looking forward to the night that was to come.

Again, though, it was not to be and we should have caught on to the initial signs that something awful had happened.

After about maybe 2km of walking down the Promenade des Anglais, we saw it.  The first body, covered in a white sheet, the sheet being stained in blood.  OK, now we start to panic, just a little bit.

And then, not even one minute later, the second body, again, covered in a white sheet, this one stained in even more blood.

“Are those dead bodies??” I wondered to my friends, who were also both visibly freaked out.

We crossed the street to get off the body-dotted Promenade and we found ourselves on the sidewalk on the other side of the street.  We obviously decided that we were no longer gonna go out and we were going to go back to the Airbnb.  And so we started walking and there was an apartment building with some people outside of it, and I went to ask and inform myself what happened, why there were some dead bodies along the Promenade.

And the lady tells me, in French, that a truck had come during the fireworks and had just started running people over, that at least fifty people were dead according to first estimates.  I panicked, translated for my friends, who also panicked, and the lady and the people with her suggested we rush back to our Airbnb and just stay indoors for the night.

And of course, that’s just what we did.  We nearly ran back to the apartment, completely freaked out, and the entire time my thoughts were of my mom, who would surely be in the car at the time and listening to the news, and she knew very well I was in Nice and she’d probably think I was dead.

I get to the Airbnb and I see I’ve received some messages from friends who are wondering if I’m OK, especially Fiona who knew exactly where I was.  I tell her I’m OK and I immediately call my mom, who was still at work and had not heard the news yet, thank God.  I tell her what happened and she was freaked out as well, and she proceeded to inform the rest of my family I was OK, and they all then called me to check in on me.

At the same time the same was happening with both Samo and Peter, we’re both informing our close ones that we’re OK.

We were OK.  We avoided the tragedy that left 84 dead.

I couldn’t sleep that night, I turned on the news and watched until 3 AM all the while playing a game on my computer to distract myself from the horror.

As the first testimonies started to arrive on the news I really came to the realization of what just happened.  Samo, Peter and I escaped potential death by about half an hour by being slow.

I also realized how many lives had been effected.  A crazy driver drove a truck into a huge crowd, going nearly 90km/h ran people over.  They’re calling this ‘le meurtre des enfants’, the killing of the children, and it’s uncanny how many kids were killed, there with their families just trying to enjoy the fireworks.

Above all else, and my Aunt Iolanda told me this when I was telling her what happened a couple of days later, she told me it wasn’t my time, that there were angels in the form of my grandparents and loved ones looking over me and ensuring I did not get out and observe the fireworks that night.  My friends were slow, I was trying to rush them because I WANTED to go see the fireworks, really badly.  And I didn’t, I was inside, sheltered and probably having some wine with my friends, unaware of what was happening a mere 3km from me, at the time of the attack.  I was not present for the slaughter, I could have been a witness and been even more scarred for life, or I could have been among the victims.

Even today, and I think for the rest of my life, I will remember this evening, but not for my near-death, but for the fact that I was present for a horrific attack and saw first-hand the damage it causes and the way it effects peoples lives.

It is awful, terrible and some people in this world are sick.  They are sick and they have no right to cause this much damage on peoples’ lives.  I really hope that this stuff does not happen again, although undoubtedly it will…

Why can’t the world just be at peace?

Of course, the next day we just went on with our lives, cause what else are we going to do?

But these attacks are just a brutal reminder that we are all lucky to be alive, we are lucky (some of us) that the people closest to us are alive, and we all need to embrace life and make the most of it while we can, because the world can be a cruel place and things can happen unexpectedly.  Enjoy life and be happy, cause really, that’s all you can do.

Again, I condemn these brutal attacks and my thoughts and prayers go out to not only the victims and their families, but everyone who had to witness this terrible tragedy.