Inside the mission to rescue Sydney students from a war zone

They woke to their phones screaming. In the dead of night in a Dubai hotel, 14 Barker College students, en route to an international robotics competition in Turkey, found themselves in the crossfire of a rapidly escalating war.

A missile was coming. The emergency warning on their phone told them to seek shelter.

“This amber alert comes up on your phone. It’s an alarm but even louder,” year 11 student Oliver Porter said.

“We’re very much now in the middle of something that we would never plan to be.”

Within minutes, teenagers had grabbed their backpacks and had rushed into corridors clutching their passports and following brisk instructions: south stairwell, lowest possible floor, away from glass.

Students were told to turn their phones off to conserve their batteries, and if they were separated from the group they should find any shelter they could.

It was just the start of a four-day mission to get home from a conflict that has engulfed the Middle East and caused global havoc.

Initially, they were directed into the underground car park; before long, hotel staff moved them into a cavernous ballroom below ground, hastily reimagined as a shelter with chairs pushed to the walls.

“If anything happened, it would happen now,” year 11 student Jiaqi Wan said. “We were all pretty panicked.”

In the following days, the airport and nearby hotels were hit. From certain windows, students and staff could see bombs being intercepted.

Earlier that day, robotics coach Jeser Mross Becker had spoken with senior students after the US strikes hit Iran and tension in the region looked set to escalate.

“We didn’t expect them to target the hotel and the airport,” Mross Becker said.

For the next four days, they changed their sleeping patterns, napping in the afternoons so they were more alert at night. In the background, teachers and the crisis team pored over flight manifests and consular advice, modelling multiple evacuation routes through Oman, Sri Lanka or India.

Oliver and his classmate Jiaqi tried to keep younger peers calm.

“It was strange because you see these kinds of things on the news, but you don’t really expect to be in it,” Jiaqi said.

“We didn’t want anyone freaking out.

“Our aim was to get the students [calm] so our teachers could make a plan.”

They took turns doing their male peers’ make-up and filming “silly” music videos.

While all this was unfolding, Barker head Phillip Heath paced his Sydney office fielding calls from terrified parents.

“You are incredibly powerless,” Heath said. “In some ways, you are better off to be there. Back here, you don’t quite know what is going on. All your protective instincts come out.”

After five days, the students and their teachers were able to escape on an Emirates flight to Australia.

Mross Becker described the airport as “apocalyptic” and he described how, while waiting for the flight, he watched on as a missile directed at the airport was intercepted.

Watching from the airport window, he witnessed the US consulate being hit. When they finally had their chance to escape, and took off, the plane was “very low and very fast”.

Students arranged two lines of luggage trolleys so they could hide between them and seek shelter if another bomb came towards them.

Mross Becker texted Heath the entire time and breathed a sigh of relief when they passed Omar, and entered safe territory.

The experience of living through a major international conflict has given Jiaqi a new perspective.

“It’s made me also reconsider … everything we see is affecting somebody; you just don’t exactly know who it is,” she said.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.