SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A San Diego man is sheltering in place inside his hotel room in Dubai after his flight landed just two hours before the war began.<\/p>\n
Chad Cummins and his girlfriend had been traveling the world for months when they decided on a 2-day stopover in Dubai to break up a long flight from Asia to Europe. They landed Saturday morning, and by the time they reached their hotel in downtown Dubai, the war had begun.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, we got in just in time to get stuck,” Cummins said.<\/p>\n
Early the following morning, he received an emergency alert on his phone warning of possible incoming missiles.<\/p>\n
“We started to get quite nervous at that point,” Cummins said.<\/p>\n
Cummins believes a photo taken from their 44th-floor room shows smoke from one of two hotel fires from Iranian attacks.<\/p>\n
“Yes, they were attacking hotels, and the only conclusion you could come to is that they were trying kill Western civilians,” Cummins said.<\/p>\n
While the grounds of the U.S. Consulate in Dubai caught fire from a suspected drone attack, Cummins said he hasn’t heard of any other attacks impacting a hotel.<\/p>\n
Cummins has not left the hotel.<\/p>\n
“I feel safer at the hotel, I think, than being out or looking for some other type of accommodation,” Cummins said.<\/p>\n
He has spent much of his time looking for flights and calling the airlines. The main airport is open but with limited flights.<\/p>\n
“I bought 3 different tickets on 3 consecutive days, but they kept getting canceled,” Cummins said.<\/p>\n
When he calls the airlines, he said the calls don’t connect.<\/p>\n
“It drops the call. Doesn’t even ring,” Cummins said.<\/p>\n
Cummins also registered online with the State Department.<\/p>\n
“I did that, and they reached out to me today, and I actually could have gotten on a plane tonight, but I’m here with my girlfriend, who’s Colombian,” Cummins said. “They can’t help people who aren’t U.S. citizens, and of course, I couldn’t just abandon her here.”<\/p>\n
The plan now is to stay put and wait.<\/p>\n
“It’s extremely nerve-wracking as you can imagine,” Cummins said. “If there’s not a lot of attacks coming and they feel safe, where we can open up the airport a little more, I bet we’ll be able to go\u2026 If not, we may be here a lot, lot longer.”<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A San Diego man is sheltering in place inside his hotel room in Dubai…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[29179,19378,9066,74,76,75,95631,95632],"class_list":{"0":"post-207266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-dubai","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-middle-east","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-san-diego-headlines","13":"tag-san-diego-news","14":"tag-stranded-americans","15":"tag-stuck-americans"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}