Days in bomb shelters, seeing buildings reduced to rubble, and nights interrupted by air raids were a lot for Al Ferguson to live through and process. But the South Florida journalist’s final 14 hours in Israel would prove to be some of the most harrowing.

“We left very secretively,” Ferguson told OutSFL on June 19 from Amman, Jordan. “We got short notice. We had an unmarked, black minivan. We left at 6:30 in the morning for the West Bank border crossing.”

What is normally a four-hour trip took 14 hours. “They took a travel route that was not the beaten path.”

This particular checkpoint is primarily used by Jordanians and Palestinians, but in the rush to get out of Israel it is a sea of refugees looking to escape the conflict.

“We got to the border and that’s where all hell broke loose,” he recounted. “There were literally thousands of people trying to get out of Israel. Busses and cars, people walking. It took eight hours to go one mile.”

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Ferguson says people are living out of their cars waiting for clearance to cross. He likens it to the scene in “Gone With the Wind” when everyone is fleeing Atlanta as the Union Army cut a path of destruction.

When he will get home is still an open question. Plane seats out of Amman are scarce and more westerners arrive every hour. But on this night, Ferguson will sleep well. No air raid sirens. No missiles overhead. No concern of his place being bombed.

“While I’m still in limbo, I am not in the conflict.”

Al Ferguson reporting from rubble-filled war zone days ago. Screenshot via OutSFL Live, YouTube.