The implications were profound. Artificial joints that doctors needed for surgery were often not kept on hand, he knew, and were typically flown in by suppliers a day in advance. The city’s fire department, which sometimes dispatched emergency medical workers to far-flung accident sites by helicopter, might not be able to reach injured people quickly enough.
Around midnight, University Medical Center of El Paso, the area’s only Level 1 trauma center, became aware of the closure from local news reports. Hospital leaders in the area quickly began to talk about how they could help one another, including with air transport. The Southwest Transplant Alliance, an organ procurement group, began exploring how to deliver organs to El Paso by road.
The officials who run the airport were also lighting up their phones.
“[S]o far this is no BS,” wrote Alexander Rao, the airport’s operations manager, in a text message exchange first reported by Politico.
“Anyone else to call?” the airport’s security manager texted to Mr. Rao.
“FBI?” Mr. Rao answered.
El Pasoans are accustomed to feeling overlooked. They occupy a liberal oasis in a deep red state. Nine hours west of Dallas, El Paso has a rich mix of cultures, making it more of a cultural sibling to Albuquerque than to Midland or Lubbock. And though the city of 680,000 has a respected university and safe neighborhoods, residents complain that it is often dismissed as a crime-ridden desert wasteland.
At 12:13 a.m. local time, the El Paso airport announced the closing in a cryptic post on Instagram. Jim Dobrowolski, a father of two in a cozy middle-class El Paso neighborhood, found it after seeing a reference to the situation while browsing Reddit. Mr. Dobrowolski, who manages a dental practice, wondered if the United States might be at war with Mexico — or even under alien invasion. After scanning the local and national news and finding no answers, he briefly considered loading his wife and two young sons into their SUV and driving north to Albuquerque.
