The Big Shocker

Shock. Frustration. Anger. Sadness. The feeling of being Afraid.

These were the feelings that took over my body as i arrived to the airport on November 1st. I was already about 10 minutes late to the time i had initially wanted to arrive to the airport. There had been a ton of traffic on the way there, so i had been dropped off with my friend on Sepulveda & Century. As i proceeded to cross the street, a cop started yelling angrily to get back and not try to cross the street again. I was confused, but proceeded to going back to the street I came from. On my way there, i ran into a flight attendant and asked her if she knew what was going on. Calmly she said "someone got shot on terminal 3". My first thought was WTF. My second thought was, why is she this calm?

Next thing you know, there are floods of people with luggages crossing the street and congesting the area I was standing by. Everything happened so suddenly. Helicopters, Police, Ambulance & Security came rushing by with their guns and equipment. 10 minutes late to the scene were the news trucks, who as usual are late to report on big events.

The helicopter above us gets on a megaphone and says "THE AIRPORT IS NOW ON LOCKDOWN". I finally go to twitter and see that the LAX handle has indeed confirmed this lockdown and has also announced that all the streets & freeway exits that lead to lax have been shut down as well.

It was at this point that i really sat down and thanked god for the fact that i was late to the airport. Had i arrived at the time i wanted to and not hit traffic because of the car accident by the freeway entrance, i could have possibly been walking in at the same time the shooter was to terminal 3. Wowsers.

So i spent the next few hours reflecting, contacting loved ones and following the news. The Radisson graciously accommodated the thousands of stranded travelers in their hotel lobby in the meantime, hoping that the airport would open soon enough. Hours passed by, all we could see was the horrendous story of the gunman and how he took out the TSA agent and caused the second largest airport to shut down in an instant.

After switching my flight to later times, i came to find out that Virgin had officially cancelled every flight available that day and that LAX would not plan on opening terminal 3 at all for the remainder of the day.

So at this point, we were upset, frustrated and hungry, with food being miles away and cars not able to pick anyone up in the area. We started the long journey to the nearest burger king (which was hella far) and made the biggest line of my life for food that isn't even real.

I found me and my friend a ride, but traffic was just so ridiculous coming into the area that we had to continue walking further away from the airport just to get picked up. By the time i got home it was almost 5pm.....which means i spent over 8 hours at the airport just awaiting a flight that would never depart.

I really don't know what people think when they perform stupid acts like the one of the gunman at LAX. Because of him, over 800 flights were cancelled, 400+ flights were made to land in different airports and thousands were left stranded to drag bags for miles to be able to catch a taxi. The nightmare that was November 1st was finally over but that memory will last forever.