Former Arrowtown-based Todd Barclay, who’s been in Riyadh for two years, has already been indirectly affected.
After flying back for a wedding in Wānaka last Friday, the next day his Qatar Airways flight from Melbourne to Doha was turned back after only three hours in the air.
From Sydney, where he’s waiting for a flight back to Saudi, he says things had felt ‘‘pretty calm and safe comparatively — like, Riyadh’s landlocked, it’s at least four hours’ drive from any shoreline’’.
Barclay points out the embassy’s in the diplomatic quarter where a lot of Westerners hang out — ‘‘there’s a lot of cafes and if you go running, it’s all around that area’’.
‘‘As an expat living over that side of the world, I think how fast things escalated.
‘‘People are definitely looking at what their exit strategies are.
‘‘Some friends have booked flights out to the UK if that’s where they’re from, while others are holding off.’’
However, he praises both the Saudi government — ‘‘they’ve been really supportive of the wellbeing of all the expats that are there’’ — and the NZ embassy, which he says is ‘‘on top of the comms’’.
The embassy’s issued a ‘shelter in place’ alert to the 500 or so Kiwis in Saudi: ‘‘Stay indoors, follow local authorities and avoid unnecessary travel.’’
Barclay says he remains confident he and his wife Natalie, who didn’t travel to Wānaka, will be fine in their Riyadh compound.
‘‘I think we’ll definitely feel slightly safer in Riyadh than other [Gulf countries], for sure.’’
