Laura Harper, Laura Billiet and son

Laura Harper, left, and Laura Billiet with Billiet's son, visiting tourist sites in Brussels the day before the deadly terrorist attack. The Alabama natives were at the airport when the bombs went off, and later triaged the wounded in a police station across the street from the airport. (Courtesy of Laura Harper)

Two Alabama women -- close friends since they were elementary classmates at Randolph School in Huntsville -- had just pulled their car into the drop-off lane at the airport in Brussels to say good bye when the bomb went off.

"We had parked and had opened the car to walk inside to the check-in counter," said Laura Watts Harper, a Madison resident and mother of three who had been in Brussels visiting close friend Laura Wang Billiet for Billiet's youngest son's baptism. Harper is his godmother.

"We were standing right by the car and heard this...boom," said Harper. "I live close to Redstone Arsenal so in my mind, I thought, 'What are they testing?'"

Billiet, a Huntsville native who currently lives in Brussels with her Belgian husband and their children, said her first thought was that it might be noise from some kind of construction.

But then the glass blew out of the windows. They jumped into their car and heard another boom.

"There were so many cars and we couldn't move," said Harper, "So I said, 'Let's just run.'"

Grateful

AL.com reached Harper and Billiet this morning via Skype. Both women were still visibly shaken as they recounted the terror attack they experienced just hours ago.

Earlier today, two explosions at the Brussels airport and one at a Brussels subway killed at least 34 people and wounded about 170 more, according to Belgian media. One Belgian state broadcaster reported 14 killed at the airport and 20 dead at the subway station.

At the airport, one blast reportedly happened outside the security checkpoint for ticketed passengers and one near the airline check-in counters, reported CNN.

Harper, Billiet and Billiet's brother-in-law were parked at the "kiss and ride" dropoff area right outside the check-in counter where the bomb went off.

They were running a few minutes late because Billiet's brother-in-law had asked to stop for croissants on the way to the airport.

"If we had arrived one minute earlier, we would have been right inside, right where it happened," said Harper. "(The explosion happened) at the counter I was going to.

"I'm just so grateful."

Shrapnel wounds and burns

After the second blast, the trio began running, along with everyone else, and made it to a police station across the street from the airport dropoff, where they were ushered inside.

"At first I was a complete coward, hiding under the desk," said Harper. "I thought maybe they have guns, maybe people are going to start shooting us. We were praying."

Soon after, injured people started coming to the police station, "People bleeding, people burned, people with all their hair burned off," said Harper.

Billiet is a trained physician, an internal medicine specialist, and began triage on the injured.

"One of the people, a woman from the check-in counter, was carrying a walkie-talkie covered in flesh, and she had multiple shrapnel wounds," said Billiet. "And we had nothing there, just paper towels.

"We were triaging people and trying to stem the bleeding."

Two young girls, around ages 6 and 8, came into the station. They were sisters, badly burned, and terrified. They didn't know where their parents were.

They did speak English and Harper stayed with them, singing songs to them and trying to calm them down.

"One of them was going into shock, she was shaking so hard," said Harper. "They had a lot of burns on their faces."

Harper, who has three daughters, said the girls were close in age to her own.

"She did such a good job with the little girls," said Billiet. "They really needed her. I'm a doctor and I've never been in a mass casualty situation, but seeing the sick and dying is not new to me. But even for me (this experience) was really traumatic. And for someone like Laura (Harper) who hasn't been around this kind of thing, it's hard."

While Laura comforted the sisters, Billiet was working with others to treat as many as 40 wounded people.

"Mainly shrapnel," she said, "but a lot of people with hearing loss, singed hair, and one woman who was pregnant. We were giving them water, and cutting off clothing to see where their wounds were."

'So much worse'

They could hear ambulances but no help was arriving at the police station.

"I was getting really angry (that no medical help had come)," said Harper, "so I went downstairs and out of the building, and I found a paramedic."

She told him about the injuries they were dealing with and asked for help. He told her "It's so much worse inside the airport and we have to go there first."

Shortly after, more ambulances and medical personnel arrived and were able to take the most seriously wounded out of the police station on stretchers.

Harper recalled a badly-injured boy with his mother; the mother spoke no French or English, only Spanish. Harper, who also speaks Spanish, was able to act as an interpreter and as a physical crutch to help the woman get onto the ambulance with her son.

"Things were so insane that (the paramedics) would have taken the boy anywhere without her," said Billiet.

'Like 9/11'

After the injured were transported away, Harper and Billiet and Billiet's brother-in-law were left standing near the police station, across the street from the melee at the airport and wondering if more explosions were coming.

Their car - which had all of Harper's luggage and her purse, and Billiet's purse with wallet and ID - was unreachable behind police barricades and is still there. The trio decided to walk several miles to the office of Billiet's other brother-in-law.

They passed lines of people walking along the highway, carrying suitcases. They'd arrived at the airport around 7:40 or 7:45 and it was now around 10 a.m.

Billiet said she is thankful she didn't bring her children to the airport to say goodbye to Harper.

Harper said she'd been able to contact her husband back in Madison to let him know she's OK. She hopes to be able to fly home from Frankfurt tomorrow. Billiet and her family were supposed to move back to the states this weekend, but "I don't know if that's possible at this point," she said.

They said Brussels - normally a busy city with lots of traffic - has been eerily quiet.

"It's like 9/11," said Harper. "It seems like the way it was on 9/11. Everybody is staying home."