Boston Strong

by Casey Sherman

  While firefighters hosed down the charred library, Boylston Street was filled with frightened and confused people. Harried cops strung up yellow crime scene tape on cross streets as runners wrapped in foil blankets made their way out of the bomb scene — some crying, all with looks of shock and confusion across their weary faces. Panicked relatives of runners and spectators, many in tears, peppered officers with questions about how to find their loved ones.

  TV cameramen ran with reporters by their side, seeking out witnesses to interview and racing to find officials to get the most up-to-date information on what exactly was happening. With no cell phone service in the Boylston Street area, reporters, cops, politicians, and citizens alike were largely in the dark regarding the full scope of the emergency they were now facing. People were being directed to safe locations, and police maintained control of the scene, but no one — including those at the top of the chain of command — truly had any idea what was really going on.

  Was it a coordinated attack? Were there more bombs? Was this al-Qaeda? Or was it a homegrown terrorist in the vein of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh?

  A popular early, knee-jerk theory was the latter, with many citing the fact that the bombing occurred on April 15, tax day — just as the federal government was in the midst of a budget-driven shutdown.

  Don Nelson, a veteran photographer for Boston’s NBC-affiliated TV station WHDH, was working at the finish line when the explosions rocked the city. His camera rolled and caught the explosions and bloody aftermath. His footage has been widely disseminated since the attacks and provides some of the best documentation of the explosions and their gruesome aftermath.

  “The first one blew,” Nelson said at the scene. “Nobody in the street got hurt, none of the runners. One guy [a runner] went down. Smoke went straight up in the air. About fifteen seconds later, the second bomb went off. I ran down and I saw one guy without legs. One guy, his face was just torn to shit.”

  Reporter Megan Johnson’s cell phone buzzed non-stop, but she couldn’t return calls or even texts because of the spotty service. She and the group of wayward partygoers knew they were trapped in the midst of a terrorist attack and walked around in a fog, trying to get information. They shuffled around the mall for the next half hour or so as the grim scene outside became more apparent. The group eventually filtered out onto Stuart Street, where the families and friends of runners had gathered, holding up signs bearing their loved ones’ names. These were signs that they had made to cheer on their family members and friends as they ran; now they were being used to track down the runners to ensure they weren’t dead.

  “Oh thank God! Thank God!” was a common refrain as families were reunited with runners. Tears flowed.

  Megan made her way to Neiman Marcus, just across the street from where the second bomb exploded. There were people sitting on the floor everywhere. Runners wearing their Boston Athletic Association-emblazoned marathon jackets or wrapped in silver foil blankets covered the linoleum floor. The men’s department became a makeshift recovery area. People offered jackets to each other, water, hugs.

  “At Copley. Runners offering each other jackets to keep warm. Even in heartbreak there is good in people,” she was finally able to tweet.

  She heard a female runner call out a man’s name. They ran to each other and embraced. Megan snapped a picture. It turned out the couple had just gotten married. The woman had been running near the finish line when the bombs went off. Megan tweeted out the picture with the words “Couple just reunited.” The picture quickly went viral and wound up in the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic, among other publications.

  For any reporter, it was a tough story to cover. For Megan, who is not a hard news reporter, it was overwhelming. She felt on the verge of tears the entire time. She wanted to just go home and cry.

  Police Commissioner Ed Davis needed to set up a command post. Initially, he had decided on the Boylston Street fire station, but there was a suspicious package there, so that was no good. They next went to the Copley Marriott hotel. Davis and two officers armed with rifles went into the hotel and asked to see the manager.

  “We need your ballroom. We need to set up a command post,” Davis told the manager.

  “But, we have a wedding in there. It’s all set up for a wedding!” the manager replied. In fact, as chaos ensued outside the hotel, staffers inside were busy stringing lights in the ballroom and organizing table settings, oblivious to the world around them. The city was now under siege, but the news still had not reached at least a few people — like this hotel manager — who were still going about their day, business as usual. Davis didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  Despite the uncertainty of the situation, the commissioner’s softer side surfaced and he decided he didn’t want to ruin someone’s wedding. So they crossed the street to the Copley Westin hotel. Davis’s group, which had now grown to several armed officers, went to the desk and told the manager they were taking over the ballroom. The army of cops eventually commandeered the entire third floor of the massive hotel.

  Kurt Schwartz showed up at the Westin, as did National Guard General L. Scott Rice. He had two hundred troops in the city already for the marathon, and another thousand were on their way. With the help of state police and the National Guard, Davis and his colleagues managed to shut down twelve blocks in the busiest financial and retail district in New England.

  Cell phone service had gone down, leaving not only terrified runners’ families scrambling for information on their loved ones but also top law enforcement officials looking for ways to communicate. Davis and Schwartz had satellite phones, but service on those was spotty as well.

  The only option was a single landline in the ballroom. Davis and FBI Special Agent in Charge Rick DesLauriers assigned a federal agent to guard the phone, making sure no one used it except top commanders. A call soon came in from United States Attorney General Eric Holder.

  “Commissioner, how are you doing?” Holder asked.

  “We’re OK,” Davis sighed.

  “Whatever you need, we will take care of for you,” Holder told him. “You have all the resources of the FBI at your disposal. If there’s anything you need, call me. Good luck.”

  In addition to dealing with the scene itself, Davis had the city’s overall security to think about. His mind raced. Could there be a larger cell about to activate? What was the fire at the JFK Library all about? Was it connected?

  He also gave the order to lock down all the hospitals in case one of the terrorists was among the injured and his accomplices attempted to rescue him. Davis activated the department’s stress unit to begin reaching out to traumatized officers. A team of cops from New York who had learned all too much about trauma on 9/11 was already on its way to Boston.

  Javier Pagan was exhausted. His cell phone, like those of most everyone there that day, had no service. He walked to a pay phone and called his husband, Pedro.

  “Pedro,” Javier said, breaking down. He rambled, uttering the words explosion and terrorist attack.

  “Huh?” Pedro said. “I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “I’m fine. I have to go,” he said, and hung up.

  He returned to the scene, and his captain came over and gave him a hug. Javier met up with his partner, George Diaz.

  “There’s a place for us over at the Lenox Hotel,” the captain told them. “Get over there and get off your feet.”

  Javier walked into the Lenox, got a bottle of water, and went to use the bathroom. He splashed water on his face, glaring at himself in the mirror in an attempt to come to grips with what was going on. He couldn’t.

  He emerged from the bathroom and heard a woman yelling, “Evacuate the hotel!”

  People started running. A beefy, athletic man with short, black hair was running toward him, holding a woman’s hand and with two kids in tow.

  “Officer, what’s going on?” the man asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Javier res
ponded. He recognized the man from television commercials for local life insurance company SBLI. It was Tedy Bruschi, a former New England Patriots star linebacker — now an insurance pitchman — who was at a fundraiser at the hotel when the bombs went off.

  Javier is not a sports fan and didn’t learn until later that the man from the commercial was one of Boston’s most iconic sports figures.

  “Oh my God, you’re the guy from the SBLI commercials,” Javier said.

  Both men chuckled. Javier snapped back into cop mode and directed the retired NFL star and his family safely out of the hotel.

  After helping evacuate people from the Lenox, Javier left, too. He walked up Exeter Street to Huntington Avenue and walked into the Copley Square Hotel, which was open to first responders.

  Inside, there were dozens of cops. Some were on their radios. Some were just sitting quietly, taking breaks. Others were drinking bottled water or eating.

  Javier was in a fog, but he realized he hadn’t eaten all day. He was starving. He went to the kitchen and asked the chef to make him a burger.

  Weary, hungry, and overwhelmed, Javier took a seat by the window alone. A TV overhead showed images from the terror attack on a constant loop. Javier sat somberly and ate his burger. His phone service was returning, and a steady flow of texts came in from other officers in the community service unit, asking if he was all right. He left the hotel and walked to the medical tent. EMS officers had golf carts, and one of them approached Javier and asked him to sit down.

  “Are you OK?” the EMT asked.

  Javier just sat there expressionless. He wasn’t injured, but the EMT could see he was traumatized.

  “Just sit here and relax,” the EMT said.

  As Javier looked around the tent, he realized the scope of what was going on. He thought about Pedro and his experience during the attacks on 9/11. He ruminated on all the ways that, over the years, he had thought he might die on the job. He had considered that maybe he would get shot or hit by a car. But it had never crossed his mind that he would be standing just a few feet away from a terrorist’s bomb when it went off.

  He felt lucky to be alive. He was.

  He also thought about people in Tel Aviv, Cairo, and other cities where bombings are a more common occurrence. But this was not supposed to happen in Boston. Not at the marathon. Not ever.

  He stayed in the medical tent for a while and then was assigned to stand watch on Boylston Street to prevent people from entering what was now the biggest crime scene in Boston’s history.

  Pedro wanted to check on Javier but wasn’t sure if the city was locked down. He took a bus from the couple’s West Roxbury home to the Back Bay MBTA station and called Javier.

  “I can’t really leave. I can’t go over there,” Javier told him. “Just go back home. I can’t really get out of here. I’ll see you later.”

  Pedro, remembering the mayhem of 9/11, understood and went back home.

  Javier was relieved by a fellow cop around 11 p.m. He walked back to the South End station, got in his car, and drove home. He came to a stoplight that was red. He looked up at the light and started crying. When he arrived home, he walked into the house and hugged Pedro. Javier sobbed.

  Back at the bomb scene, hotels in the twelve-block area had been evacuated. The Lenox Hotel was turned into a headquarters for the evidence technicians. It was a place where detectives like Danny Keeler could slip away from the madness of the moment, have a burger, and refuel.

  Commissioner Davis sat in a briefing in the Lenox Hotel and gazed out the windows at Boylston Street — his beloved Boylston Street. Instead of smiling families, partying college students, and exhausted-but-triumphant runners, he saw stoic men and women in Tyvek suits, combing through the blackened bomb scenes. He saw agents from every conceivable federal and state agency: the FBI, the ATF, the US Marshals Service, Customs and Immigration, Homeland Security. And once again he saw the blood — lots of it.

  Cops already had their eyes on a Saudi national who was at the scene and had raised suspicion after the bombings. He turned out to not be connected, but he was an early subject of intense questioning. Agents went to his house, and the media picked up on it, erroneously calling him a suspect. Today, Ed Davis says the person was an “important witness to talk to” but was never a suspect in the attacks.

  The public needed answers. The public needed some comfort. A press conference was hastily called at the Westin. Reporters raced to the hotel, where they were met by heavy security. Bomb-sniffing dogs and machine gun-toting officers patrolled the building. Guests milled about aimlessly. They could not leave. Some sat by a fire reading. Others chatted nervously about the bombings. There was a line at the concierge desk as people scrambled for information.

  Inside a second-floor ballroom, Commissioner Davis and other city officials were joined by authorities from local and state police, the Boston Fire Department, Boston Emergency Medical Services, the National Guard, the FBI — and Governor Patrick. The governor and his state police security detail had been at odds throughout the afternoon about the location from which the state’s chief executive should monitor and manage the crisis. Once the bombs had exploded, Patrick demanded that he be taken directly to the state house, just a few short blocks from the crime scene. The state trooper responsible for his protection argued that the building was a potential target for the terrorists and that the governor would be much safer inside the MEMA bunker in Framingham. The trooper was probably right in his assessment, but Deval Patrick didn’t care. His city and his state had been attacked, and the governor had to lead from the front, not the back.

  Deval Patrick stepped forward and addressed the media and a live international audience. Mayor Thomas M. Menino was watching on TV from his hospital room at the Brigham.

  “Good afternoon, everybody. Well, we’ve had a horrific attack here in Boston this afternoon,” Patrick said somberly.

  Camera shutters clicked softly as photographers captured the gravity of the moment, written on Patrick’s face and the faces of those lined up behind him. Eerie silence filled the space between his words.

  “Commissioner Davis is going to give some details about what we know so far, mindful that we don’t have the whole picture yet. But we have gotten a good deal of information. Commissioner Davis will take all of us through the information that we have and then I’ll come back and talk about some of the things and ways in which we’re going to ask people to help us help you this afternoon.”

  Governor Patrick consciously set a tone right from the get-go that the focus of these officials’ efforts was going to be to look forward. Yes, they were desperately seeking to piece together what had happened, and why. They were searching for those responsible and were determined to bring them to justice. But right out of the gate, the governor set a trajectory toward the future, recovery, and hope, and assured the public that we were all in it together. The slogan Boston Strong had yet to be coined, but the seeds of that sentiment were planted from the moment the first victim was treated at the horrifying scene.

  “Thank you, Governor,” Commissioner Davis said as he took the mic. “At 2:50 p.m. today there were simultaneous explosions that occurred along the route of the Boston Marathon near the finish line,” Davis said. “These explosions occurred fifty to one hundred yards apart and each scene resulted in multiple casualties. At this point in time, all of the victims have been removed from the scene. We have sent officers to hospitals to be in touch with family members and possible witnesses.”

  In fact, it had taken just twenty-two minutes for first responders to clear the Boylston Street area after the bombings. Reporters scribbled furiously on their notepads as they received this first official response to the bombings.

  “We immediately activated a system of response that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the federal government has in place for these types of incidents,” Davis continued. “My first two calls were to the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI and to the Colonel of the S
tate Police — both Rick DesLauriers and Tim Alben immediately sent resources.”

  Davis told the press that officials were still trying to determine what had caused the explosion at the JFK Library. He reminded everyone that it was still an active scene but that officials were treating the blasts on Boylston Street and in Dorchester as if they were related.

  “We’re recommending to the people that they stay home, that if they’re in hotels in the area that they return to their rooms, and that they don’t go any place and congregate in large crowds. We want to make sure we completely stabilize the situation.”

  The ballroom was silent, save for camera clicks, as the hulking police commissioner continued to deliver the latest information in his booming baritone voice. Governor Patrick stood stoically by his side.

  “After this incident occurred, there were certainly a lot of people who were running from the scene,” Davis continued. “Some of them deposited bags and parcels they were carrying. Each one of those bags and parcels is being treated as a suspicious device at this point in time. We have multiple EOD teams that are checking each one of these bags. But at this point, we have not found another device.”

  Present were reporters from every major news outlet in Boston, as well as many national outlets that had either been in town already to cover the marathon, or that had raced in after the bombings occurred. Reporters had many questions, but there was virtually no information given about what had actually happened. The media — and the public at large — was thirsty for answers, as well as some semblance of assurance that the situation was under control.