Carlsbad family escapes from Lebanon

By: PHILIP K. IRELAND - Staff Writer | Tuesday, July 25, 2006 12:34 AM PDT ∞

CARLSBAD --- Trapped in Beirut as Israeli military jets and the Hezbollah militia traded bombs and rockets last week, Carlsbad's Kim Mikhael and her family are now safely out of Lebanon, although a relative said she is not sure how the Carlsbad family got out or where it went.

"We called ... and they definitely got out," Kim's sister Judi Stapleton said Monday. "We assume they went to Cyprus, but we don't know."

Stapleton said she hoped to hear from her sister some time Monday. By late Monday, no word had come.

Mikhael and her family ---- husband Simon, a family law attorney in Carlsbad, and their two children, 13-year-old son Zayn and 9-year-old daughter Zandra ---- traveled to Lebanon on July 12 to visit Simon's ailing father, she wrote Friday in an e-mail to the North County Times.

Mikhael said they arrived just hours before Israeli jets began bombing the country in response to cross-border attacks by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia, a military organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Mikhael provided more detail in another e-mail early Saturday --- hours before she and her family escaped from the war-torn region --- sent from her in-laws' four-story apartment building in the mountain town of Balloneh, north of Beirut.

Mikhael said she and her family watched the conflict unfold from their balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. Zayn was the first to spot the Israeli warships that came to form a blockade, Mikhael wrote.

"Soon after, the port area in Jouneih was bombed," Mikhael wrote. "At night, especially the first few days, we could hear the planes and see the 'fireworks' and see the orangey pink skies from the fires. Sometimes we could see what we believe was anti-aircraft fire."

Mikhael said her children had been staying busy playing board games, cards, making up jokes, reading, even doing math.

"It has been very stressful for them," Mikhael said. "They are very active kids ---- used always to be doing something ---- and obviously their activities are quite restricted."

Mikhael said her husband's family built the four-story building in the 1980s to escape the violence of the Lebanese civil war in Beirut. About 11 miles north of Beirut, the building in a mountain town on the coast hosts several relatives, too.

Jouneih is considered a safe haven, and relatives and friends from the region continued to flee there to escape the bombing, Mikhael said.

"My husband's parents are safe," she wrote. "Other siblings, aunts, cousins live in other parts of Beirut and are pretty concerned. None of us (is) getting too much sleep. Last week my husband's sisters-in-law came from south Beirut to stay with them because of the bombing. A car back-fired and the sister-in-law jumped and started crying. Everyone is on the edge emotionally."

Mikhael said getting out of Beirut has been a challenge. U.S. Embassy officials seemed ill-equipped to deal with some 25,000 Americans seeking help with evacuation, she said.

"It has been difficult getting information from the embassy here," Mikhael wrote. "They are clearly overwhelmed and perhaps didn't expect this to progress as rapidly as it did. The frustration comes from the inconsistency of information that we have received.

"The problem was that many people who did not have appointments nor even proper documentation were allowed to also come into the processing site," she wrote.

"Apparently the state department sent (appointment) confirmations and the embassy told people who were able to get through (on the telephones) 'just come on down.' There were no lines ---- only crowds of people attempting to push ahead of others."

Tempers flared when about 500 people, some who had waited for 10 hours, were told the U.S.S. Nashville was full.

But, Mikhael said, once U.S. Marines arrived from the U.S.S. Nashville, organization improved.

-- Contact staff writer Philip K. Ireland at (760) 901-4043 or pireland@nctimes.com.

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Lebanon conflict engulfs 3 North County families

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