JEDDAH: As panic swept through King Khalid International Airport after the Houthi attack on Oct. 10, Ebtehal Abdullah Alardh was not thinking about her own safety, but of the many passengers calling out for help.
The Saudi Ground Services representative, who works in the Riyadh Air system and is also a licensed aircraft dispatcher, immediately opened emergency doors and began directing passengers toward safe exits as dust, smoke and panic spread through the airport.
“My first concern was getting people to safety and helping them survive. I was not thinking about myself or what might happen to me,” Alardh told Arab News.
What followed was a series of moments in which she moved from one injured passenger to another, helping evacuate people, treating wounds, guiding emergency teams and comforting those caught in the attack.
One of the first people to approach her was an elderly man walking with a cane. His shoulder was injured and he asked her for help.
She sat him on a chair, found a scarf on the ground and tied it around his wound to help control the bleeding, and then asked a security officer to take care of him.
More injured passengers soon began coming toward her.
“I tried to help them as much as I could, reassure them, calm them down and remind them of Allah,” she said.
When an injured Starbucks employee told her that people were trapped and needed help, Alardh immediately went there with a security officer.
She found injured passengers and frightened women calling for help and began reassuring them and praying as emergency teams worked to reach them.
Among the people she helped were sisters Aroob and Tala Saud Al-Sarah, who were trapped amid the debris. Alardh helped them out and comforted their mother.
She navigated broken glass and debris, focused on getting medical care for the injured.
Alardh also stayed beside Jordanian victim Mahmoud Al-Barqawi, comforting him in his final moments. She also assisted an Egyptian victim identified as Azza.
Despite the danger, she refused repeated requests to leave the area.
A Riyadh Air manager, as well as a rescue worker, urged her to get out for her own safety.
“I could not leave while there were injured people who still needed help,” she said. “I could not leave people who were waiting for someone to reach them.”
She worked alongside security personnel, rescue teams, Civil Defense and firefighters, even helping to extinguish fires.
Her familiarity with the airport helped emergency teams navigate the affected areas. She moved between Terminal Three, the arrivals areas, parking lots and the executive lounge, directing teams toward injured passengers.
Inside the executive lounge, she helped medical teams take vital signs, prepare IV fluids, record patients’ information and move the injured onto stretchers and into ambulances.
“Every case needed to be dealt with quickly. Every minute mattered,” she said.
While guiding a group of paramedics toward injured passengers, Alardh fell on a stationary escalator. She injured her left knee and pelvis and suffered swelling and pain in her neck.
But she did not stop. “I did not focus on my injury at that moment because I was occupied with the injured and reaching anyone who needed help,” she said.
One moment has stayed particularly close to her heart: that of Manal Hamdan Al-Shammari and her only daughter, Farah. Amid the wreckage, Manal asked them to look after her.
“For me, she was not simply an injured person who needed to be moved. She was a mother entrusting us with her daughter and worrying about her in the most difficult moment of her life,” Alardh said.
Alardh helped to evacuate mother and daughter from the executive lounge and later visited them to check on their recovery. Manal later contacted her to say that she continued to pray for her and had not forgotten what she had done.
By then, Alardh herself had spent time in hospital because of her own injuries. Yet even after receiving treatment, she visited injured passengers in hospital to check on them.
For Alardh, the events of Oct. 10 were never about recognition.
“I was not looking for praise or appreciation, and I was not thinking that anyone would write about me or talk about my role,” she said. “I was simply acting according to my conscience and the religious, national and humanitarian values I was raised with.”
She praised her colleagues, security personnel, military personnel, paramedics, Civil Defense officers, firefighters and other workers who remained at the scene and did what they could under extremely difficult circumstances.
“I do not see what I did as an act of heroism as much as a humanitarian duty,” she said, adding that any recognition she receives should be for all those who helped the injured and saved lives.
Asked what motivated her to continue helping, Alardh said: “My country, my country, my country — and humanity, humanity.”