The Daily Mail UK
written by Lydia Warren, Annette Witheridge and Michael Zennie
Tuesday April 16, 2013
Witnesses are describing how twin bomb blasts left a war zone in the 26th mile of the Boston Marathon, littering the final stretch of the race with disembodied limbs, runners who lost their legs, and a lone shoe with flesh still in it.
Surgeons spoke about operating theaters that looked like battlefield hospitals as 140 injured victims poured into the city's hospital's - many with wounds only seen in combat.
Reports suggest that the small, homemade explosives were packed with ball bearings that tore off feet, ankles, calves and entire legs and they exploded just outside the crowded finish line.
'These runners just finished and they don’t have legs now,' 35-year-old Roupen Bastajian, a Rhode Island state trooper and former Marine, told the New York Times. 'So many of them. There are so many people without legs. It’s all blood. There’s blood everywhere. You got bones, fragments. It’s disgusting.'
Mr Bastajian, who was running in the marathon, said if he had not beaten his 2011 pace in the race, he, too, might have been one of the victims.
Even seasoned firefighters were sickened by what unfolded on a beautiful spring day in Boston.
'In 28 years, this is definitely the worst I've seen,' Boston Fire Department District Chief Ron Harrington told NBC News.
'Bodies and body parts. Blood all over. A little boy lying in the street. A young woman in her twenties. Both dead. It was mayhem. I saw two people with arms hanging loose, and one without a leg.
'A shoe with flesh still in it.'
At least 17 people are in critical condition and some are not expected to survive the night. Victims lost at least ten limbs in the blast.
Three people have died, including eight-year-old Martin Richard, who was waiting for his father near the finish line.
Several news outlets have reported that ball bearings were used in the bombs. The small steel balls are popular among bomb-makers the world over because each one becomes a deadly projectile when launched by the explosive force of a bomb.
Some doctors, though, said they found street debris in the wounds of their patients, not ball bearings.
'Rocks, bits of metal, soda cans, anything that is really close to a blast like that can be fragmented,' Dr. Ron Walls, chair of emergency medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told ABC News.
'Everything we saw was ordinary material that could have been propelled by the device.'
Hotel owner Marc Hagopian told MailOnline how he witness unimaginable carnage 35 yards from the bomb explosion.
'It was chaos - blood and limbs everywhere. There was a man who had lost a leg, another had lost both,' he said.
'There were seven, eight, nine people lying on the ground. They appeared to be dead.
'Marathon runners were tearing off their shorts to use as torniquets to help the injured.'
Mark was inside the Charlesmark Hotel, on Boyston Street, when the first bomb went off. As he rushed outside, the second exploded.
'There was blood everywhere, along with severed limbs. It was just awful,' he said.
The second bomb came about 10 seconds after the first. People were knocked off their feet by the force of it.'
Mark, 50, videotaped the aftermath, showing a man lying apparently unconscious on the pavement covered in blood.
Another man tears off his red t-shirt to use as a tourniquet as police officers rush to help.
A voice can be heard asking: “What the f*** happened, a bomb?”
Another man, wearing a David Beckham soccer shirt, is seen running around.
The area around the hotel was evacuated. Mark and his guests gathered in a restaurant two blocks away waiting for police instructions.
Hagopian’s mother Marcia Scott-Harrison, who was evacuated from nearby Commonwealth Avenue, said: 'Mark is in total shock but at least he wasn’t hit.
'His hotel is just yards from the finish line. A man sitting outside the hotel had his leg blown off. It is awful.
'I heard both explosions, then a dozen cops came running up Commonwealth Avenue. They were shouting for everyone to get off the street.
'There were young girls crying, I pulled three into my apartment building. It was chaos. No one knew what was happening.'
Amid the horror, though Bostonians showed the mettle.
Runners turned around after pounding 26 miles and raced into the disaster zone.
'Somebody's leg flew by my head,' spectator John Ross told the Boston Herald. 'I gave my belt to stop the blood.'
Videos show runners stripping off their shirts and tying them around the legs of wounded spectators for tourniquets.
Gestures as small as offering a drink of orange juice and use of a home bathroom were recounted on Twitter in an ongoing online recollection of the fellowship that emerged in the wake of Monday's devastation.
'People are good. We met a woman who let us come into her home and is giving us drinks,' tweeted Ali Hatfield, a Kansas City, Missouri runner who was in town for the race.
As the city reeled from the tragedy that killed at least three and wounded at least 100, Bostonions seemed to steady themselves by reaching out to embrace those hurting even more.
'Two Lutheran pastors walking Commonwealth, Bibles in hand. For those who need comfort, they said,' tweeted Chelsea Conaboy, a Boston Globe blogger.
A Google Docs form was quickly set up to allow Boston residents to open their homes to marathon runners from outside the area who had no place to stay in the aftermath of the tragedy.
'Anyone wanting to get out of the back bay come over plenty of tables and calm here and don't worry you don't have to buy a thing,' tweeted a local restaurant called El Pelon Taqueria. 'open wifi, place to charge cell, or just don't want to be alone, food and drinks,- pay only if you can #bostonhelp.'
Pictures of heroism and humanity flooded Twitter, from police officers carrying injured young children to the residents who left their warm homes to greet runners stranded by the emergency and offer them comfort.
'Local Boston resident giving @AliHatfield and us orange juice and offering a bathroom to use,' tweeted Ramsey Mohsen, a Kansas City, Missouri, Web strategist.
In a tweet hours later, Mohsen revealed how shaken he was by the blast, 'Only now has it hit me. Holding back tears best I can.'
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