‘It never stops being scary’ | Houston-area man stuck in Qatar as attacks happen all around him<\/a><\/p>\nSpooner and a colleague had been in Doha working on a project for QatarEnergy when the conflict intensified. Like many Americans in the region, they soon found themselves stranded after Iranian missile strikes led airlines to cancel flights.<\/p>\n
\u201cTuesday morning we woke up and it was really bad news, and I thought, \u2018OK, we can\u2019t stay here any longer,\u2019\u201d Spooner said.<\/p>\n
QatarEnergy helped arrange a driver to take the pair across the border into Saudi Arabia. The roughly 4\u00bd-hour trip carried risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat drive in and of itself was quite dangerous,\u201d Spooner said. \u201cWe were warned. It took us right past the U.S. base which had shut down something like 80 rockets and hundreds of drones.\u201d<\/p>\n
The base was struck just hours after their taxi passed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust kind of like dodged a missile there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Spooner and his colleague eventually reached the airport in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, only to learn the airspace there had also been closed. They quickly arranged another four-hour drive to Riyadh, where they were able to fly to Jeddah and then to Amsterdam. As of Friday, Spooner said they were waiting for a flight back to Houston.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just really an indescribable sense of gratitude when that plane took off,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve never felt more humble ever in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another Houston-area traveler, Shanice Day, said she was stranded in Dubai as the conflict escalated during what was supposed to be a birthday trip.<\/p>\n
After several days of uncertainty and multiple canceled flights, Day and a friend decided to book an unexpected route out, flying to Australia simply to leave the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven on the plane, you have a sense of anxiety because you understand what\u2019s going on, and you know you\u2019re taking a risk by flying in this air right now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The pair flew about 14 hours to Australia before taking another long flight to Los Angeles and then continuing on to Houston.<\/p>\n
Despite making it home safely, Day said she remains concerned about other Americans still trying to leave the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet those Americans out of there,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to see it, but it\u2019s another thing to live that in your reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Day was expected to arrive in Houston on Friday evening.<\/p>\n
Got a news tip or story idea? Email us at\u00a0newstips@khou.com<\/a>\u00a0or call 713-521-4310 and include your name and the best way to reach you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benjamin Spooner and Shanice Day are both on their way back to Houston. HOUSTON \u2014 Americans caught in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-194131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-headlines","10":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}