For Andrea Bárcenas, a St. Thomas graduate living in France for the last four months, being in Paris during the attacks Friday was a surreal experience.
She was not near the mass shooting or the five suicide bombs that followed, which as of Sunday afternoon accounted for 132 dead and almost another 100 in critical condition. But she locked herself in her apartment anyway after watching the news.
“It could have been me,” the 23-year-old Columbian said in a phone interview Sunday morning. “But I was in the right place. It was weird and sad the next day to see the world super sad.”
After locking the door and checking in as “safe” on Facebook, Bárcenas waited for two hours until her friend who was at Stade de France – the soccer stadium near a McDonald’s where one of the bombs went off – came to the apartment.
“It made me think about how these terrorist attacks are always affecting the world, but the same time it’s a small environment where it actually happens,” she said. “I was in shock, I was a little bit scared they were going to start attacking the whole city, but at the same time I didn’t see anything.”
French president Francois Hollande says the Islamic State is responsible for the attack and French warplanes attacked ISIS militants in Syria Sunday night.
All seven known attackers have died, but after finding weapons in a getaway car, French officials are now searching for a possible eighth attacker.
While Bárcenas, who was only visiting the city for the weekend, did not see anything, her friend at the stadium, Andrea Hare, did.
Hare said she heard the explosion when she was at the soccer game, but nobody seemed to react. Some tried to see what happened, but the game just kept going.
The Peruvian native received a call from a friend telling her there had been an attack and she and her boyfriend left before they started the evacuation.
“I felt crazy because literally no one was leaving,” Hare said Sunday afternoon in a phone interview.
When she walked outside she saw chaos.
She walked towards the metro station and saw a crowd of police and security officers , but she still didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t realize the bomb had gone off at the McDonald’s right beside the stadium.
She and her boyfriend saw people running from the scene and ran with them to get to the metro station.
Once she arrived, she was able to reunite with Bárcenas back at the apartment.
Neither Bárcenas nor Hare knew anybody who died or were injured in the attacks.
Bárcenas, who graduated with communications and journalism degree in the spring and is returning to Peru next week, said in the days of mourning since Friday, the streets of Paris have been mostly empty except for police and security officers.
She said people are more cautious; she was checked before going into a restaurant to see if she had any weapons. The City of Light has gone dark, she said.
“Yesterday, (the Eiffel Tower) was dark,” Bárcenas said. “They didn’t light it up.”
But both Bárcenas and Hare agree that it is mostly sadness in the city, not anger.
“It’s been really moving,” Hare said about the days after the attack. “People are there for each other. They’re helping one another; they open the doors of their homes after the attacks if people couldn’t get to their place.”
But despite all the chaos, Hare said the events have strengthened her resolve.
“To not back down, (and) don’t let them win by inflicting terror.”
