Henderson couple reflect on surviving 2016 Brussels Airport bombings

Catherine and Philippe Breyer had just finished checking their bags at Belgium’s Brussels Airport when the first bomb went off.

It was the morning of March 22, 2016. The long-married couple were headed back to their Henderson home when they heard the nearby explosion, then felt the shock wave.

They weren’t injured, but in seconds they were enveloped by smoke and screams.

“We looked at each other, and there was no doubt in our minds that it was a bomb,” Catherine, 58, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “And then we had to react.”

She and Philippe sat in the living room of their Anthem Country Club home Monday, as the one-year anniversary of the attacks approached, and gave their first interview since returning to the United States.

DEVASTATION ALL AROUND

They were in the middle of the airport at the time of the explosion, with no exit nearby and no time to think. They began sprinting in the opposite direction of the explosion.

“Then the second bomb exploded,” Catherine said. It was only about 15 to 30 feet away, packed in luggage.

Catherine caught shrapnel in her ankle and legs. Philippe’s left leg was blown apart from just above the knee.

Part of the ceiling above them started falling.

“Once the smoke kind of dissipated, I saw my husband lying there, and I could tell his leg was really in bad shape,” Catherine said.

A few minutes into the ordeal, a random man with a military background wrapped Philippe’s leg in a makeshift tourniquet. First responders took nearly two hours to reach Philippe, then hospitalize him.

“I saw more, because I could sit,” Catherine said. “I could see the devastation around us, and I saw how many people actually died that day.”

Catherine was taken to a hospital about an hour after Philippe, who had more severe injuries. She and her husband were two of more than 300 people injured.

Thirty-two others died, either at the airport or at the crowded Brussels metro station where a third bomb went off — attacks for which the Islamic State group would ultimately claim responsibility.

“We were lucky enough to be alive. Both of us,” Catherine said. “If you looked at the destruction, the devastation of the airport, I think it was like a 5 percent chance for us to both get out of that situation alive.”

SHARED EXPERIENCE

The couple didn’t return to their Henderson home for about six months.

Philippe, 60, spent more than three weeks in the hospital, then two more months healing and building strength. He spent another three months finding the perfect prosthesis for his left leg.

“It has been a very long process,” Philippe said, before quickly crediting the couple’s friends and relatives, including the couple’s two adult children, for their support throughout the last year.

“We were just extremely happy to come back to the States; to come back to Vegas, Henderson and our friends here,” Catherine said.“The support, the love, was outpouring from day one.”

Though Catherine and Philippe were together the day of the bombing, they rarely traveled as a pair.

Philippe was an international banker, who worked as a director for Brussels-based company Euroclear. He commuted to and from Henderson every couple of months for work.

This time, Catherine visited him during the tail end of his work trip, so they decided to return on the same flight.

“Luckily it happened that way,” Catherine said, “because it’s one thing to be in a situation like that and to have to explain to your husband — or to your children, your family, your friends — how it was. But we experienced the same thing.”

Philippe said their shared experience allowed them to better understand each other moving forward.

“It’s much easier to comfort each other when you’ve lived through something together,” he said. “So that is something that accelerated our healing, also the mental healing, over the last 12 months.”

Once Philippe masters his balance, he’d like to get back on the golf course.

“Hopefully, thanks to this very sophisticated prosthesis, I am able to swing again,” he said. “I am looking forward to doing that with my friends here.”

CHERISHING LIFE

Since the bombing, both Philippe and Catherine have flown into and out of Brussels Airport, and they plan to travel much more in the future.

“I think life is too short to be all of a sudden afraid of everything,” Philippe said. “There is no reason to give people who did this any reason to think that we are afraid.”

If anything, Philippe said, he and his wife have become more open and compassionate people.

Catherine was always social, but the couple noted that Philippe reaches out to friends and former co-workers more often, because so many of them reached out to him after the attacks. They also have become close with the man who wrapped up Philippe’s leg shortly after he was injured.

“Whenever I see what can happen to people — be it through car accidents, be it through the wars in the Middle East, etc,” Philippe said before pausing. “A life so quickly torn apart. And so, for the rest of our lives, we will cherish life and try to give back. That is what we promised to each other.”

Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com. Follow @rachelcrosby on Twitter.