DENVER (KDVR) — Tuesday marks the 10th day since the Hamas attacks on Israel, and Americans are still working to get out of the region.
Some U.S. citizens are getting help from Project Dynamo to return home.
Corrine Mille, a Sedalia resident, has been to Israel four times and wanted to take a friend who had never been. But this time was different.
“We got there on Oct. 7, three hours after the first missile hit. Tel Aviv we landed. The airport was a ghost town. There were shelter signs everywhere,” said Miller.
They made their way to the north to hopefully escape the conflict.
“[We thought] let’s just wait it out and see what happens. We didn’t want to abort the trip immediately,” said Miller.
After all, she had planned this two-week trip for 10 months.
“Three hours before we landed the spreadsheet was annihilated.”
However, they were not immune to the sirens and missile attacks. Soon enough she got a Home Front Command notification on her phone telling her there was “rocket and missile fire” in her area.
“So we had to after having a siren for the first time as an American,” said Miller. “Our Airbnb host said to get under the kitchen table because there’s a cement ceiling above you. She said to close the metal shutters so glass doesn’t come in. So we did that. After you get the siren you wait 10 minutes, and then you’re allowed to come out; well then another siren came and another siren came so probably under the table about 40 minutes.”
At that point, they knew they had to cut their trip short.
“It’s very terrifying for us to hear that. So it was difficult to sleep through the night because you’re thinking I don’t really want to sleep in case I hear a siren again,” said Miller.
They got connected with a group called Project Dynamo to get them home. It’s a veteran-run organization that helps those impacted in disaster areas and conflict zones.
It was a sigh of relief after they arrived at the Cyprus airport Tuesday morning.
“Another sense of relief here at the airport that it really materialized because we had a couple of, ‘We’re gonna go, no we’re not gonna go, we’re gonna go and we’re not gonna go.’ We got halfway to the airport and we turned around. So just getting a boarding pass and being in the airport and being assigned to a gate is a very good feeling. We have a long journey,” Miller said.
The flight went from Cyprus to Athens to get more Americans, then it refueled in Cairo.
On Wednesday, Miller landed safely in Tampa and snapped a photo from her arrival. She plans to stay with her family in Florida until she can make it back to Colorado.
