Nice terror attack: A human tragedy that has shaken me down to my core

Natalie Ryan is a 19-year-old Monash University student who was in Nice for the Bastille Day fireworks. This is her harrowing account of her experience.

July 17 2016

Natalie Ryan

The attack on Nice is a human tragedy that has shaken me down to my core.

My friend Andie and I were staying a block from the attacks. We were at the exact place it occurred 10 minutes prior. You will have seen the news reports.

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However these events have a tendency to shock like a pin prick, with that shock subsiding rather hastily.

This is often how I have responded to these events. The instance is never forgotten, but it is also never understood. However I want you to understand, to the extent that my insight can offer.

Natalie Ryan, left, with her friend Andie Fine.

The emotions I have felt in the past 24 hours have superseded anything I have ever experienced in my life.

We arrived in Nice at 12pm. We're currently backpacking around Europe together, and this was the one night that we had in a proper hotel, courtesy of a handy discount.

The location was perfect, it was on the same block as the Promenade des Anglais, the road that lines the beach, also the road where the attack later took place.

We ventured into the main streets in the Old Town to have a subpar but cheap French dinner. During dinner, I remember noticing members of the special forces walking past us with huge machine guns.

People react as they gather at a makeshift memorial near the scene of the carnage in Nice. Photo: AP

After dinner, we walked to the beach and sat down to watch the fireworks. We were in the centre of it, surrounded by joy, with people drinking and singing the Marseillaise.

However I was exhausted, and during the fireworks, my eyes kept closing so we decided to go back to our hotel.

People gather at a makeshift memorial to honour the victims near where a truck mowed through revelers in Nice on Friday. Photo: AP

So back we went, I'd just put my pyjamas on, Andie was on the bed on her phone waiting to shower, and we laughed at how loud the streets were, thinking that the French really do know how to party.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang on the door, and we could hear other doors being knocked on as well. Andie looked at me and said "Don't answer it, it's just drunk people."

A woman watches the Mediterranean Sea from the Promenade des Anglais after it reopened to traffic on Saturday. Photo: AP

The banging continued, so I decided to open it, expecting to find a drunken Frenchman who I would laugh at and then shut the door to. In burst 20 odd people panting, crying, swearing among them, a mother and father with three young children who looked so confused and scared.

With broken French on our behalf, and English on theirs, we were told that there was gunfire in the streets. Andie and I suggested that perhaps it was just leftover fireworks, but one woman turned around and firmly stated "No, I know what gunfire sounds like, and I just heard it."

However no one had a clue what had actually happened. Out of precaution, we had the lights low and no one was talking. If a noise was heard, everyone was shushed so that we made no sound.

We were in survival mode, a mode which I had never been in and never want to be in again. Every move was made out of fear. Others in the room who had lost their friends on the street in the rush were crying on their phones, trying to contact them.

Luckily everyone's friends were safe, and were instructed to come to our hotel to seek refuge. This process however was terrifying, as our response when someone knocked on the door was to shush everyone, demand who it was, and then slowly and hesitantly unlock and crack open the door. Everyone was afraid of what was on the other side.

Then finally, the news began to cover the incident.

It was then, there on the floor of my hotel room which was so hot due to the amount of people in our room, that it became real. This wasn't a mistake, it wasn't just fireworks, this was offensive violence and human lives had been claimed in the process. And I was there. Moreover, was it even over?

I desperately tried to call my parents, but our Wi-Fi wasn't good enough. When the line finally worked and I heard my dad's voice, I began to cry.

There was so much, too much to deal with. I was trying to stay positive but fear was all that I could process, and after 20 minutes in the room and loud noises on the streets, I worried if I'd actually make it.

I felt like a sitting duck. Looking around the room, seeing how scared everyone was, that was particularly harrowing. The mother next to me was trying to comfort her children, Andie and I also tried to keep them occupied.

In French, she assured them that everything was going to be alright, her face, however, said something entirely different. A French woman from Nice was praying next to me.

Across the room a Russian couple who were in Nice only as a stopover were holding each other.

After three hours in our room, people started to file out. Everyone was so grateful, but Andie and I didn't know how to respond. We were just glad we were there to open the door and let them in.

The news reported at least 84 dead, hundreds injured. However this is about more than the numbers, it's about these people.

I remember reading about the shootings in Paris last year and the main source of my horror and devastation at this event was in response to the number of deaths.

However being in that room with all those people, I realised that we often underestimate the human element of these attacks.

Think of the victims, think about the fact that their lives were stopped or so forcefully altered at a moment of such elation and pride in country, in freedom, in life. Think of the residents of Nice, this is their home, their house. This incident has fundamentally undermined their lives because it has compromised the safety they should associate with home.

A young international student from Denmark who was in our room saw the van drive through the street, only noticing because the road was otherwise blocked off and there weren't meant to be cars.

Another woman was standing behind the man whose videos of the van are being used all over the news. One move, one drink, one minute longer, and we could have been victims.

I met all of these people in my room in the scariest circumstance, and I talked to them, learnt about them, about where they came from. These lives, so precious, important and real, were all so close to being ended.

Please don't remember Nice as a headline or as statistics, remember Nice and its victims as the important and beautiful human beings they were, people just like us, but who were taken too soon.

Natalie Ryan is a 19-year-old student from Melbourne who is backpacking through Europe.