Explosions at Boston Marathon

[Phillip V]

[Caliga]

Boston Marathon explosion: Huntsville woman just crossed finish line, says scene was 'pure chaos'
  By Paul Gattis | [email protected]
on April 15, 2013 at 3:00 PM, updated April 15, 2013 at 3:27 PM

BOSTON -- Suzanne Taylor of Huntsville had just completed her third Boston Marathon when explosions shook the area at the finish line, injuring dozens.

"I had probably crossed the finish line less than five minutes before it happened," Taylor said about 30 minutes after the explosion. "It just became pure chaos and we had to get out. I had to hurry back to my hotel."

Taylor's voice was still shaking as she spoke.

"Very scary, very scary," she said.

Her husband, Dink, finished the race about an hour before the explosions, Suzanne said. She spoke from her hotel, which she said was about a mile from the site of the explosions.

"I can feel my phone going off like crazy," she said as other people attempted to reach her by cell phone. "They're saying it was trash cans. It was just chaos down there. You can hear the fire engines and medical people. It's bad."

According to the Boston Marathon list of entrants on its website, 20 runners from Madison County were participating.

Taylor said she had just completed the race and received her medal, a bottle of water and a blanket that all runners get at the end of the race when the explosions happened.

"There were two explosions, one big one and one small one - right after the other," she said. "At first, we thought it was a compressor. Then everybody started saying it was a bomb. Everybody just started trying to run. It's hard to run after you run a marathon but there were people rushing to get out of the area.

"When one bomb went off, you didn't know if something else was going to go off."

Taylor said she noticed more of a military presence when the race with 27,000 runners started.

"We noticed that they had military upon the buildings watching," Taylor said. "I wonder if they had had some...that was kind of peculiar to me. That's kind of weird to have military people up there with binoculars before a running event at the start.

"It just didn't look normal. It just didn't look normal."

Several thousand runners were still on the course, Taylor said, and she estimated there was about a thousand spectators at the finish line when the explosions took place.

"It was very crowded," Taylor said. "It was very, very crowded."

[Phillip V]

12 dead, nearly 50 wounded, 10 with amputated limbs.

[CountDeMoney]

Seedy's right that the PD are going to be in deep shit for this one- the bombs slipped through in places tailor-made for a terror attack.

News is saying the area was swept by the po-po pup-pups this AM, before the race started but not during; they're also saying that some witnesses are saying at least one of these devices was in a mailbox.

It will be interesting if any helpful surveillance video surfaces later, which I'm sure it will.  I'm sure every business with a camera system within 10 blocks is being scoured right now for the last 24 hours' worth of footage.

[Berkut]

How much of the preventative effort for a major public event like this is done by non-local security?

IE, does FBI get involved in security before the event, or is it strictly Boston PD?

[derspiess]

The "military presence" may have just been the National Guard, which was there helping out.

[Caliga]

Lots of unconfirmed statements in this NYPost article from unnamed sources, like: 1) first explosion occured in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel 2) Authorities ID a suspect in marathon bombings - he is being guarded in Boston hospital. Note: This is all unconfirmed.

[Caliga]

The "military presence" may have just been the National Guard, which was there helping out.

I assumed they were always there, at least since 9/11, which is why I thought her comment was strange.

[Queequeg]

People automatically go in to conspiracy logic during times of crisis.  Alex Jones is already being an asshat on twitter.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I almost wonder about the fact it is Kim il Sung's birthday, apparently the biggest holiday in Norkistan. Can't even imagine how crazy things would get if this was linked to North Korea.

My feeling is 50/50 between McVeigh types and homegrown Muslim terrorists. A huge portion of the terrorists we've caught plotting shit stateside have been moron amateur hour domestic guys wanting to glorify Allah but with none of the training of real mujahideen/al-Qaeda types. One of these days some knucklehead American who reads too many Islamic jihad message boards is bound to get lucky with some amateur plot.

[CountDeMoney]

How much of the preventative effort for a major public event like this is done by non-local security?

IE, does FBI get involved in security before the event, or is it strictly Boston PD?

FBI's not really involved in stuff like this, especially in a city with such massive agencies as Boston PD. 
They may send a representative agent to the local TacOps Center if it was ramped up by BPD--if the TOC was even fired up for something like the Boston Marathon, which I really doubt. 

But they rarely deign to honor everybody with their presence unless it's something really, really big.

[Caliga]

Police: Explosion at JFK Library may be connected to Boston Marathon bombings.

This worries me.  A few people I used to work with were working in development for the JFK Library & Foundation last time I checked.

[CountDeMoney]

My feeling is 50/50 between McVeigh types and homegrown Muslim terrorists. A huge portion of the terrorists we've caught plotting shit stateside have been moron amateur hour domestic guys wanting to glorify Allah but with none of the training of real mujahideen/al-Qaeda types. One of these days some knucklehead American who reads too many Islamic jihad message boards is bound to get lucky with some amateur plot.

I'm leaning homegrown Mooselimbs, if only for location. Luckily, the idiot or idiots couldn't park a van and take the wrong keys with them this time.

They do classify the incident at the JFK library as "related" however, so we can't rule out Damned Dirty Protties.

[citizen k]

"Does this mean Ann Margaret won't be coming?"

[Caliga]

It's hard for me to imagine why Muslims would want to attack the JFK, yeah.