Long Islander Returns Home After Week Stranded in Dubai

Donna Caltabiano spent a week dodging missile alerts and listening to distant booms from a five-star hotel in Dubai. Now she’s home in Floral Park, and nobody has told her who’s paying the bill.

Caltabiano, 72, left Long Island on Feb. 12 for what was supposed to be a Middle East vacation with friends. She traveled to Turkey first, then spent 12 days touring Jordan through Gate 1 Tours. When she arrived in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, the expanding war with Iran had other plans.

“When we got to our hotel on Saturday, we were told that we had to stay in place, because the airports were closed and they were bombing the city,” she said. “We just got there, we didn’t know what to do next.”

She sheltered for a week before catching a flight back to JFK on March 8. The relief was immediate. “I felt relieved when the plane took off,” she said. “Nobody helped us get out. Nobody.”

Her account raises pointed questions about what American travelers actually receive from their government in a crisis, and what it costs them when the answer is very little.

The U.S. State Department issued guidance urging citizens in the UAE to follow local media and contact the department for assistance. As of March 2, the government ordered all non-essential U.S. government employees and their families to leave the country due to the threat of armed conflict. American tourists stranded in the same city got a different message.

“‘Shelter and stay in place’ was the big line we kept hearing,” Caltabiano said.

When she tried calling the U.S. embassy, the calls went to voicemail. The automated system offered options only for death or detainment abroad. Her situation, a living American citizen stuck in an active conflict zone with no way home, apparently did not fit the menu.

“Our country was not helping us,” she said. “We heard every day, ‘Oh, they’re sending planes.’ They never sent any planes. They never sent anything.”

The financial fallout is still unresolved. Caltabiano said the extended hotel stay and elevated airfare costs remain someone else’s problem to define. The UAE’s leadership, Gate 1 Tours, and the U.S. State Department have each declined to provide her with clear guidance on reimbursement. A week in a five-star Dubai hotel, the Voco Bonnington, does not come cheap, and emergency flight pricing during an active regional conflict runs well above standard rates.

Caltabiano was measured about the physical experience itself. The UAE’s air defenses were active throughout her stay, and residents received regular cell phone alerts warning of incoming bombs or missiles. She and others eventually stopped reacting to the alerts.

“After a while, we just started ignoring those beeps,” she said. “Sometimes, we would hear a boom, and look up and see puffs of smoke in the sky before we got the beeps.”

She acknowledged the gap between how it felt in the moment and what the situation actually was. “I realize now that I’m home, how dangerous it probably was for us there, but at the time, it didn’t seem like this,” she said.

She did not spend the entire week confined to her room. After several days inside, she began taking walks and eating at restaurants. “I really can’t say that I was mistreated, I was in a five-star hotel,” she said. “I didn’t have to cook, I didn’t have to clean, I didn’t have to do anything.”

Still, the unanswered question of who absorbs the extra costs sits alongside a larger one. The State Department pulled its own staff from the UAE while American citizens remained stranded without evacuation assistance, without a clear embassy contact, and without any commitment on financial relief.

Caltabiano is back home on the Queens-Nassau border now, reunited with her family. The vacation is over. The receipts are not yet settled, and neither is the question of what obligation the U.S. government carries when its citizens get trapped in a war zone it saw coming.