Joseph Empey, a 20-year-old Mormon missionary, walked into the front doors of the Brussels airport on Tuesday to drop off a fellow missionary who was boarding a flight to the United States. He barely walked out alive.

After just one minute of waiting in the Delta check-in line to help his colleague, Fanny Rachel Clain, 20, with her luggage, a bomb went off and the force of the explosion knocked Empey to the ground. 

“It was about 15-20 feet away,” Empey tells PEOPLE. “I remember everything went black and I was unconscious.” 

Moments later, a second bomb went off. When Empey woke up, he was “surrounded by havoc.” 

“There was lot of smoke. I kind of put everything together in my mind and I knew it was a bomb and a terrorist attack,” he recalls. “I saw bodies everywhere and there were people yelling and screaming.” 

At least 36 people were killed last Tuesday in the explosions at the airport and at Maelbeek Metro station. 

Empey, from Santa Clara, Utah, lost sight of the three colleagues he traveled with that morning: Richard Norby, 66, Mason Wells, 19, and Clain. 

Read the full article at People Magazine.