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Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

April 15, 2013 03:03 PM EST |

BOSTON — Authorities are investigating a report of two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

There were two booms heard from near the finish line inside the Fairmount Copley Plaza Hotel.

Race officials locked down the hotel because of the report.

The sound of two booms, which sounded like thunder, had come a short time earlier.

2 Explosions Rock Boston Marathon
Two powerful explosions shook downtown Boston Monday afternoon near the finish line of the Boston marathon, shortly after the winners of the race were announced. According to reports from journalists and marathon spectators on social media, people were running from the scene and as many as 30 people may have been injured. Photos posted on Instagram and Twitter showed a fireball beneath a building. According to Reuters, the hotel serving as the official marathon headquarters is on lockdown, with no one allowed in or out.

Explosions Reported Near Finish of Boston Marathon
By Josh Voorhees | Posted Monday, April 15, 2013, at 3:08 PM

Runners head out at the start of the 116th running of the Boston Marathon April 16, 2012 in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.
Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images
A scary and uncertain story is currently unfolding in Boston, where one or more explosions appear to have occurred near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The Boston Globe, citing one of its reporters on the scene, reports that "dozens of people have been seriously injured." Live footage currently being aired on CNN and elsewhere appear to back up that report, with footage showing a number of people being treated by emergency personnel.

January 21, 2013, 2:11 pm


(NECN: John Moroney, Boston) – Monday is not only inauguration day, it's also Martin Luther King Day, and the President was sworn in on King's bible.

In Boston, people gathered for the annual MLK Day breakfast. It's one of the oldest such events honoring the civil rights leader.

Dr. King spent his early years in Boston, and his impact is still felt there, as it is around the rest of the nation and around the world.

The Boston City Wide String Orchestra was part of the celebration marking the life and times of Doctor Martin Luther King Junior.

This was Boston's 43rd MLK breakfast, coming on the same day the nation gathers to watch the second inauguration of Barack Obama, the first African-American president.

The keynote speaker was Professor Jonathan Walton of Harvard University. He said King's message in 1965 shifted from civil rights to human rights. Yet, he says the nation has still not embraced the latter, and that includes the current president.

“To suggest in any way that Barack Obama is the fulfillment of King’s moral vision is to suggest that King was more concerned with racial representation than a moral and ethical orientation.”

A lot of state leaders are out of town for the President's inaugural, but Senator Elizabeth Warren and Governor Deval Patrick did send taped messages to the breakfast.

Students from some Boston schools were awarded scholarships at the annual MLK breakfast for essays on civil rights.

Despite the lack of competitive promise, Boston has a lot to offer Irish visitors. The city has the usual greenish trappings -- Dublin-themed bars, festivals and derivative sports brands -- but it also has its own newspaper for the Irish community, a business association, and a dedicated cultural center, among other assets.

"It's like Boston is the next parish over when you look off of the west coast of Ireland," says Martin Leahy, who lives in Cork and ran the 2012 race. "An awful lot of Irish people would have direct links to people in Boston -- I mean, my grand uncle, he moved to Boston as a young man and then raised a family there, and I would be typical, you know?"

Leahy finished last year's race about 15 minutes more slowly than he had hoped, but he says he responded better to the heat than many others from his country. Like others, though, he cited the experience as trumping the time.

"The race itself is intense -- it's one of the most fantastic marathons -- it's probably the marathon to do."

According to Dr. Paul Rouse, a sports history specialist at University College Dublin, both Leahy's family story and his view toward running are quite typical for 20th century Irish.

"You have to understand that in Ireland, [running events] -- although it is popular -- is very much a poor relation to the major field sports, such as hurling and gaelic football, rugby and soccer." Rouse said last week. Rouse says the running sports -- known as "Athletics" in much of Europe -- are seen in Dublin much as they are in Baltimore: As a way to stay in shape. "You couldn't consider athletics to be a mass-participation sport in Ireland in terms of competing. What you would have is mass participation in the idea of running itself as a kind of a recreational or fun activity -- kind of a fitness activity."

Rouse sees this attitude partially as a product of the country's size, and partially as an understanding of the fickle nature of competitive training methods. The biggest international Irish distance wins -- Neil Cusack's Boston victory in 1974, John Treacy's Olympic silver medal in 1984 and Sonia O'Sullivan's in 2000 -- are all a decade or more in the past, and the Irish are "extremely small country with limited resources," Rouse says. Add to that a perception that many distance events are now what Rouse calls "like Big Pharma dressed up in shorts," and the Irish have a good reason to focus their limited resources on their areas of strength -- sports like boxing and Gaelic football.

The latter is a good lense through which to look at the Irish-American experience as a whole: Initially clustered in certain cities, but spreading out over generations, with Gaelic sports leagues now popping up in places like South Carolina.

"There's no doubt that Boston is a major Irish hub, and the story of immigration is a story of clustering, if you look at the drift of Irish people to particular places, and the manner in which they stayed somewhere," Rouse said.

"The story again as I say of immigration is people following one after the next -- of remittance being sent home -- and of it being a staging place for people."

The 1996 Manchester bombing was an attack carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 15 June 1996 in Manchester, England. The bomb, placed in a van on Corporation Street in city centre, targeted the city's infrastructure and economy and caused widespread damage, estimated by insurers at £700 million (£1 billion as of 2013). Two hundred and twelve people were injured, but there were no fatalities.

Formed in 1969, the Provisional IRA adopted a strategy of violence to achieve its aim of a united Ireland. Although Manchester had been the target of IRA bombs before 1996, it had not been subjected to an attack on this scale; the biggest bomb detonated in Great Britain during peacetime.[2] The bombing was condemned by the British and Irish governments, along with US President Bill Clinton. Five days after the blast the IRA issued a statement in which it claimed responsibility, but regretted causing injury to civilians.

Several buildings near the explosion were damaged beyond repair and had to be demolished, while many more were closed for months for structural repairs. Most of the rebuilding work was completed by the end of 1999, at a cost of £1.2 billion, although redevelopment continued until 2005. At the time of the explosion England was playing host to the Euro 96 football championships; a match between Russia and Germany was scheduled for the following day at Old Trafford, and the city had the year before won its bid to host the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The perpetrators of the attack have not been caught, and Greater Manchester Police have conceded it is unlikely that anyone will be charged in connection with the bombing.[3]

If last week I had told you that one of the reasons I was extremely apprehensive about reporting to a job at the Pru, was that I had a premonition that there would be an explosion in the area either that Monday or today, you would have thought I was crazy. But I did hint at the premonition to three people. Even asked two of them who I saw as maybe being in a position to catch wind of any warnings, if they could give me a head's up if they heard anything through the grapevine. Also, note the dates for my Lyle event. Not accidental, placed to coincide with my premonition. Some kind of intuition I've got. Call me Douche-tradamus. Pray for the victims.

That would probably be a significant anniversary to some right-wing-militia types, to say the least. Who knows, though, at this point. Still could be some freak double gas-leak. Now I kind of wish I had been a bit more insistent and direct in relaying my premonitions to those two people, not that they could've probably done much. "Sir, my loony buddy/cousin has a weird feeling about Boston being a target...should we send out the National Guard?" Nothing more they or I could have done, no one would've believed me. Cassandra syndrome, you know? Even I didn't even really believe myself. Ugh, and then there was that fire in the Fens...is there a Department of Omens one can report these things to?

Now I'm feeling a crazy kind of hypothetical remorse, like, if I had overcome my anxiety and reported to that job then maybe on a lunch break last week my paranoid perceptive self would've noticed some shady shit happening in the area and reported it to the police, preventing this. Ugh.

Two bombs, at least, says the news. No gas-leaks. Fuck. Well, whoever you are, you monsters who did this shit: You're going to hell. But first, you'll be caught and brought to justice. You fucked with the wrong city.

82_28 wrote:Isn't this how the one two punch fucker did it in Norway? Should we be on edge for a mass shooting now?

Also, I too am watching CBS. There seem to be an inordinate number of soldiers at the ready as they are helping out the victims just as it happened. Is it normal to have soldiers helping to police a sporting event? (it will be now)

I had a dream about an unlocked door and I shot up out of bed and this news broke.

Also, I have been trying to track down if there is a protocol or order as to the flag placement at the finish line and can't find anything. But it does appear the "main" explosion happened just in front of the Mexican flag. Dunno if that can be significant in either a synchro way or deliberate or just one of those things.

seemslikeadream wrote:Time reporter, Andrew Katz has confirmed via Twitter, that there was an "incendiary device" possible at JFK Library as well as "another device" in front of Boston's luxury Mandarin Hotel. He gained this information through a police scanner.

http://www.latintimes.com/articles/2796 ... overed.htm

Police have found "multiple explosive devices" in Boston, where two explosions struck near the finish line of the city's annual marathon on Monday, NBC News reported, citing officials.

The Boston Marathon said on its Facebook page that the two explosions -- which killed at least two people and wounded 23 others -- were caused by bombs, but did not give a source for the information.