gigabrain

A lot of you know that I do volunteer work at some of the big events in Boston. Yesterday I was working with the Red Cross doing radio communications for the medical teams along the Marathon course. When the explosions happened I was about 4 miles away at the First Aid station in Cleveland Circle. We couldn't hear anything, and didn't know anything was happening until we saw all the public safety personnel start scrambling down the course route. Motorcycles, bikes, cruisers, ambulances...all going the wrong way down Beacon St. We got word just after over our radio net that there was an "Incident" at finish line, followed by an update from one of the BPD officers standing there.

I kinda lost track of things for a few minutes. The cell phones were overloaded at that point and that wasn't helping me. My father volunteers at the Marathon too. His station every year is at the finish line area and I hadn't heard from him all day. I couldnt get through on phone, couldnt get a message to him..I freaked a bit. It took me a couple of minutes to calm down, put my concerns aside, and work on getting things ready for whatever happened.

We prepped the station to move wherever they needed us. We had runners stopping because the race was shut down and they didn't have rides/warm clothing/etc. We got them into the tent and kept them warm and hydrated. About an hour after everything happened a state trooper grabbed our supervisor, my friend Heather, and told her they were bringing runners to Boston College as a collection point. They needed water, blankets, etc. We packed up and drove straight there.

When we got there, buses were unloading 20-30 runners and volunteers at a time. BC opened St. Ignatius church on campus to us. Their campus police and EMS were running a check-in system, they had food and water coming in. Students were streaming in to help with whatever they could carry in their hands. In the midst of a horrible situation it was really nice to see everyone stepping up.

At about 6pm I got a phone call from my dad. He was about 100 feet away from the explosion when it happened, but around the corner of Trinity Church. It took him a while to get a call to me in the aftermath. About an hour later he pulled into the cordoned off area in front of campus, ostensibly to act as a relay because the radio in his vehicle is better than our handhelds. It was more because I pushed him to come out there so I could see that he was ok.

Things started winding down after that. They moved the runners to a central location so their families would be able to find them and their belongings returned to them, and we were released to go home.

I decided I needed to take today off from work..to get myself back together. This hit way too close to home for me. I was considering swapping assignments to work at finish because they were needing experienced people. I can't stop wondering what would've happened if I had.