WITNESS ACCOUNTS: LOCAL ATHLETES IN BOSTON SPEAK ABOUT BOMBINGS
Three people have been killed and reports that more than a hundred injured in several explosions that rocked the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
KURT FEARNLEY
Newcastle wheelchair racer Kurt Fearnley told the Today Show this morning he was in a restaurant 100m away from the explosions, and says he is still struggling to make sense of the situation.
AUDIO: Listen to Kurt Fearnley speak here
“It’s a bit of a shock you know…we were sitting down and having lunch and I had finished a couple of hours before that, and just heard first a clap of thunder you know and we all looked around at each other around the table and just went, it was a beautiful day outside so we sat there starring at each other and within 10 or 15 seconds the second one came and the you kind of went oh gee this isn’t right something’s gone wrong here.”
“It’s pretty savage stuff, it’s shocking.”
It is a public holiday in Boston and Fearnley says the streets were packed with people.
“It’s hard to explain how passionate they are and how much they love this thing. They are just screaming at you the whole way down the finish line and then for it to happen 30m away from the finish line…it’s unbelievable. It’s a surreal, shocking event.”
CHRISTIE AND ANDREW DAWES
Wheelchair racer Christie Dawes says she was frantic to find out if her two-year-old child and husband Andrew Dawes were safe after the explosions in Boston this morning.
They had gone out for lunch while Christie rested in the hotel room after finishing the marathon.
” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the television and then all of a sudden I could hear just emergency sirens and I looked out the window and there was emergency vehicles coming from every which way and I thought I’ve got to get onto Drew.”
” I tried to ring him and he didn’t answer and I rang and I rang and I rang and he didn’t answer.”
” And then finally probably after about 15 minutes I was fairly hysterical, and I kept ringing and he finally picked up.”
“I think it was probably the worst 15 minutes of my life waiting to find out if they were ok.”
Fortunately they were ok, but were only a few hundred metres away from where the bombs went off.
” All of a sudden we heard this explosion go off, we were probably 2-3 hundred metres away from it but you could feel it and hear it and then the doors opened to outside and people ran out and you could see the smoke and that was the scariest part, people didn’t know what happened everyone panicked and ran…” Andrew said.
“It’ll always have that bad memory as well as I suppose from now on people might stay away. I suppose through tragedy good things come out of it but I suppose security will be different… it will never be the same for me, I’ve always had great memories here.” said Andrew.
Christie says she doesn’t want to leave the hotel room just yet, but if they do it will be all together.
“I don’t want to be in that position again where you don’t know where each other is.”
ADAM CLARKE
