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April 16th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Chris Rupe, a surgeon from Kansas, had finished the marathon just moments
before the blasts. When he realised the full horror of what was unfolding,
he roused his weary limbs for a final race to help the wounded.
For an hour, he delivered life-saving emergency treatment to victims pushed
into the medical tent on wheelchairs with limbs hanging off or blown away.
Nearby, Bruce Mendelsohn, who had been attending a race party by the course,
deployed the techniques he learned as a medic in the US army, staunching the
blood flowing from terrible wounds.
“This stuff is more like Baghdad and Bombay than Boston,” he said. “It
was pretty terrifying.”
Indeed, Boston’s darkest day elicited inspiring stories of heroism and
remarkable displays of resilience.
There were the competitors who just kept on running, not to flee the terror
but to give blood at Red Cross centres; the race volunteers who dashed to
help the injured, ignoring the danger of another bomb; the bystander who
pulled off his belt to use it as an emergency tourniquet; the chef who used
his apron to try and staunch bleeding on woman who lost a leg.
Spectators’ cheers had turned to screams at about 2.50pm when the two bombs
exploded within 20 seconds of each other, an estimated 100 yards apart on
Boylston Street on the final stretch of one of the world’s biggest
marathons.
The devices were clearly intended to mutilate as many bystanders and runners
as possible. They killed three and injured 170, including a nine-year-old
girl who lost a leg and a 10-year-old boy who suffered deep shrapnel wounds
to his lower limbs.
Jeff Bauman was identified yesterday as the man pictured in one of the most
shocking photographs, being pushed away from the scene in a wheelchair, his
lower limbs blown away. His family said that the 27-year-old, who was
watching his girlfriend compete, had undergone a double amputation.
Each hour seemed to bring another story of lives torn apart by the attacks.
Paul and JP Norden, brothers in their early 30s, were standing near Martin
Richard, the eight-year-old boy killed in the blasts.
The two men, who recently lost their jobs as roofers and had been watching a
friend run in the race, were recovering in separate hospitals after each
having a leg amputated.
And Kevin Corcoran was watching the marathon with his wife Celeste and their
teenage daughter Sydney when a bomb exploded. As the smoke cleared, he
looked down and saw that Mrs Corcoran was slumped in pool of blood, both her
lower legs blown off, and their 18-year-old child severely injured from
shrapnel.
“Terrorism ripped apart our family,” his brother, Tim, said at a vigil at the
the hospital.
Several other suspect packages were found nearby amid the chaos as tens of
thousands of onlookers fled the scene, many abandoning backpacks stuffed
with food and clothes for relatives and friends running the race. But
federal investigators have now confirmed that all were false alarms.
The acrid smell of the explosions lifted under the warm sun on Tuesday. But
with the streets around the attack site still cordoned off and heavily-armed
police and National Guards patrolling the streets, the centre one of
America’s most affluent and leafy cities now resembled a post-conflict
landscape.
Among the marathon’s 27,000 runners were thousands from overseas, including
some 347 Britons and 108 from Ireland. None were among the victims,
according to the Foreign Office, but several recounted lucky escapes.
Nick Bailey, a 56-year-old primary schoolteacher from Chichester, West Sussex,
had been forced to ease his pace after pulling a muscle on a steep stretch
of course known as Heartbreak Hill. He believes he would have been in the
path of theblasts if he had run his usual marathon speed.
“Sometimes it’s good to be a little slow,” noted Mr Bailey, a
veteran of more than 100 marathons, in a Facebook posting. “If I hadn’t
had a muscle pull on heartbreak hill and slowed down, who knows?”
Another survivor was Geoff Baggaley, 54, a dentist from Leeds, who had just
finished the race and was waiting for a friend to finish about 200 yards
from the blast.
“It was all extremely chaotic,” he said. “It sounded like two
great big thunderclaps. Within seconds there were lights flashing and sirens
going off.”
Bev Dowrick, from Plymstock Road Runners in Devon, was running in Boston with
friends from Plymouth. “Right now the four of us are veering from
elation that we’re safe, elation that we’ve finished the marathon and
absolute disbelief that we’ve been caught up in something this horrific and
disbelief that people have lost their lives and we’re safe,” she said.
Abi Griffiths, from London, crossed the finishing line around 10 minutes
before the “chaos” and heard the explosion while collecting her
bag.
“The ground shook and immediately people sort of looked around – it was
just too loud to be something that wasn’t serious,” she told Sky News.
“All of a sudden it went into a state of chaos. Police were everywhere,
we were being evacuated out of the area and it was really eerie.
“It was very, very scary and what should be a major celebration of the
achievement of running 26.2 miles suddenly became a frightening scene.”
For one group of runners and spectators, it was the second horror in just four
months. The 26th and final mile of the marathon was dedicated to the 26
victims of December’s Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Indeed, nine Newtown residents were running in honour of the victims, while
some parents of the dead children watched from the VIP stands at the finish
line. All escaped physical harm, but not the shock. “Newtown cannot
handle anymore of this,” said Lisa Abrams, whose husband was among the
competitors.
For Bostonians, the disbelief was still strong. “It was like something
that you see in a movie or on the news in another country. It’s not
something that you experience on Patriots’ Day at the Boston Marathon,”
said Matt Hodgens, who as a child handed out orange slices to thirsty
runners and was near the blast scene.
But Thomas Menino, the long-time mayor, vowed that a city renowned for its
tough Irish and Italian roots would fight back.
Mr Menino, 70, checked himself out of hospital where he was being treated for
a broken leg, to address his fellow constituents from a wheelchair. “We
will get through this,” he insisted. “Boston will overcome.”
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