I follow Peter Sagal on twitter and he tweeted, he had just finished with the blind friend he was leading and was just past the finish line when it went off. Bad enough to be in that chaos when you can see. He reported that they were fine, but has to be scary to be that close.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/15/us/boston-marathon-explosions/index.html

At least there aren't any deaths being reported as yet. That seems very unlikely, but you would think there would be some mention that no deaths have been reported as yet.

Three reported dead now.

LAST EDITED ON 04-15-13 AT 04:07 PM (EST)

My niece who moved to Boston area was working for John Hancock up until just a few weeks ago. They are a major sponsor and close so their employees can volunteer to help at the race.
She changed jobs just a few weeks ago.
She's trying to get in touch with some of her friends from her JH job.

ETA: just heard; 2 dead ; over 20 injured

I feel sick. Read unconfirmed deaths reported. Accident or attack, have they decided yet?

I'm waiting for follow-up explosions.

The following is not intended as disrespect to the dead and their families: as a terrorist attack, this would be incompetent. If this was deliberate (and I'll leave a tiny chance of gas explosion or the like on the board for now), then those responsible could have conceivably planted bigger charges, timed things to get more people, and wouldn't you place this near the starting line for maximum carnage, setting it off just after the race began? But if you mainly wanted to get police, medical, and fire responders, you'd start with a relatively small charge, get everyone in the area, and then trigger the major explosion.

I'm dearly hoping I'm wrong and this is simple incompetence -- or accident. And I'm sure someone else has thought of this -- dozens of them, some on the scene. But until they clear the zone...

By the way, do not read any commentary sections on this story. The trolls are out in force and warpainting their faces with innocent blood.

Also, no disrespect intended for those who died and suffered serious injuries in considerable harm.

My initial guess (based on past history) is that this is yet another home-grown wacko wannabe who figured out how to make improvised explosive devices (IED's are not rocket science) but couldn't come up with the optimal strategy to kill, harm and shock, not that it really mattered except to make something happen which would grab the national and international news. After all, this is the Boston Marathon.

LAST EDITED ON 04-15-13 AT 05:17 PM (EST)

BOSTON (AP) — Boston police say there's been a third explosion in the city, following two blasts near the finish line of the Boston Marathon that killed two people and injured many others.

Police Commissioner Edward Davis says authorities aren't certain that the explosion at the JFK Library was related to the other blasts, but they're treating them as if they are.

David says there are no injuries stemming from the third explosion.

He urged people to stay indoors and not congregate in large groups.

Update: Two people died and 28 are being treated in hospitals from the first (apparently two) explosions, with reports of another (possibly two) unexploded device(s) found.

LAST EDITED ON 04-15-13 AT 05:50 PM (EST)

This is now being reported as a fire and unrelated to the explosions.

An completely unrelated incident could be construed as related, and apparently this is not related, but the facts remain to be seen. The Library is distant from the Boston Marathon scene which was the focus of the bombings and this could well be unrelated. If this was the act of a single person, a JFK Library bombing would seem spurious.

The odds of a single person being responsible are starting to drop. CNN claims the 'JFK Library incident' is 'fire-related', whatever that truly means, but that typically indicates someone wants the media to lean towards coincidence -- whether 'tis or not. The Boston Globe says over one hundred people are injured. Also that the Red Sox have identified the persons responsible and are demanding the immediate arrests of Bobby Valentine and Carl Crawford.

(Note that the BoSox played their traditional noon game. Plant a bomb just outside the gates, set off after the last out, and things could have been so much worse.)

In the land of the Suspicious Backpack, we now have a field day in progress: many runners carry small ones when they're on the marathon course and most of them dropped the things when they ran for their lives. There are Suspicious Backpacks everywhere. Watch your step.

{dark}Well, they're attacking an event which non-citizens always win and the life records of a Democrat in the home of the original tea party on Patriots Day: anyone want to take a guess?{/dark}

This bombing smacks of a domestic lone wolf, like almost all of these in the past, but we'll see, pending more facts. It's almost certain that it's not Al-Queda, or else the results would have been much different.

LAST EDITED ON 04-15-13 AT 06:24 PM (EST)

It's now being classified as a terrorist attack. Toll is up to 107 injured at the moment.

I hope AyaK is not in harm's way as his office is not too far from Copley Square.

ETA - Great to see that you are in no harm, AyaK.

I agree. The bombs were in optimal places, but two didn't go off, and the other two did damage, but not as much as they cold have in those positions.

I can't make any jokes about this. It's too close to home.

Indeed, it is no joke, not with the harm and suffering that comes from it, participants, family and friends alike.

No jokes here either but a lot of idiots who are trying to make it political and place fault.

sig Syren, bouncy by IceCat, bobble head by Tribephyl, and snoglobe by agman

LAST EDITED ON 04-15-13 AT 06:31 PM (EST)

LAST EDITED ON 04-15-13 AT 06:30 PM (EST)

Yep, the course is going to be the land of suspicious backpacks probably for the next several days.

For some reason, this feels home grown, but we will see.

Footage is awful, bringing me to tears again and again. They were bombs placed in trash cans, and there was another that did not explode.

I'm praying for everyone in Boston and I hope these f*krs are caught and caught quickly.

From what I heard there was originally an even more horrific video, very bloody, but that's no longer being shown.

Fortunately, most of those who were hurt weren't hurt very seriously. One who left this world was an eight-year old boy, with 130 patients in the hospitals, some of whom are in critical condition.

Currently at three dead, one hundred and forty-one wounded, with twenty-five in serious condition and seventeen critical. CNN has many of the wounds reported as inflicted by high-velocity ball bearings -- another sign of a less-than-completely-expert device, or at least someone working around suspicious purchases.

A third grader dead. Behold the endless courage of our assailants.

The claimant silence is starting to become the dominant background sound. No one wants to be saluted for this? Very strange.

They have a person of interest at one of the hospitals.

sig Syren, bouncy by IceCat, bobble head by Tribephyl, and snoglobe by agman

From CNN:

"Investigators warned police to be on the lookout for a "darker-skinned or black male" with a possible foreign accent in connection with the attack, according to a law enforcement advisory obtained by CNN. The man was seen with a black backpack and sweatshirt and was trying to get into a restricted area about five minutes before the first explosion, the lookout notice states.

Also, a Saudi national with a leg wound was under guard at a Boston hospital in connection with the bombings, but investigators cannot say he is involved at this time and he is not in custody, a law enforcement official said Monday evening."

The later sounds a little too much like a visiting spectator or participant (remember, the marathon draws from all over the world) who had the triple bad luck to be from Saudi Arabia, at the explosion site, and sighted by police after. Hopefully he's under guard from The Stupid: I fully expect some resident idiot to try a retaliatory attack on a Bostonian tonight.

The former has a slight chance of panning out, but assumes the attacker was planting the explosives up through the last minute and/or had to detonate from extremely short range.

The person questioned in the hospital was a Saudi national, who was report­edly tackled and held by a ­bystander after he was seen running from near the scene of the explosion, said a law enforce­ment source who spoke with someone involved in the FBI’s investigation.

The Saudi man, believed to be a university student in ­Boston, is cooperating with the FBI and told agents that he was not involved in the explosions, and that he ran only because he was frightened. Investigators did not characterize the man as a suspect. No one had been ­arrested or charged by late Monday night.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/15/three-killed-more-than-injured-marathon-blast/QQOiYNU2n1vt1Xul3BXVsL/story.html

So far sounds like just in the wrong place at the wrong time like most of the people in the area.

Someone tell the @#$% Post: they've got the poor man front-paged.

LAST EDITED ON 04-16-13 AT 11:49 AM (EST)

Even now, with the truth apparently out there in multiple places, the Post still has this guy's roommate on the cover:

http://www.nypost.com/

Sickening, trashy journalism.

ETA: A WaPo writer has a headline saying, "NY Post better have good sources."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/04/15/boston-explosions-new-york-post-better-have-good-sources/

Copying it to here because I thought his message was right on point:

A lot of people are cursing the world as 'evil' today. Go watch the videos again. Look how many people immediately and with no concern for their own safety ran to help. Right now, the Red Cross is so overwhelmed with people trying to donate blood that they're having to turn them away. Of course they're {sic} are evil forces in the world, there always will be -- but today should reaffirm you're {sic} faith in people, not shake it.

Thumbs up and Like!

sig Syren, bouncy by IceCat, bobble head by Tribephyl, and snoglobe by agman

The toll keeps getting worse. Three dead (two at the scene). At least ten amputations. Horrible. Ball bearings being removed from victims, so these were Claymore type bombs. Good thing the explosives weren't any more powerful than they were.

A Saudi national with a leg injury is under guard at one of the hospitals. He's not in custody, though, so that may be for his protection.

Two unexploded devices found, these could be very important in tracking down the actual culpret(s).

This is a shot of the bomb scene in normal times - on the left side might be the actual garbage can that was used for one of the bombs that most of us saw on the videos - I recognized the Starbucks from when I was in Boston last year and confirmed the location through the map outline on CNN:

The tip of the arrow is on a mail box. The brown thing in the background behind the mail box might be a trash bin, though.

There's about five or six of the exact same containers scattered around the same city block as seen on Maps. I'd say that is a garbage can more than a post office box (wouldn't they be blue?).

That's a mail storage box. We still have office-to-office deliveries in Boston, and those brown boxes are actually locked and used by the letter carriers to hold mailbags so that they don't have to carry everything at once.

LAST EDITED ON 04-15-13 AT 10:27 PM (EST)

Whoops, thanks for the correction, kingfish/AyaK. Just seemed like there were a lot of these on the same street, so that's what I directed my focus onto.

ETA: Just saw it pointed out elsewhere - Boston has a number of metallic garbage/recycling cans that are side-by-side in one big container. That might be the metal thing we see on the right side of the picture above.

LAST EDITED ON 04-15-13 AT 11:50 PM (EST)

No. The garbage/recycling bins have advertising on them. I have to walk past one of them every day.

Edited to add: The metal thing on the right side of the picture of Starbucks is a computerized traffic light control box.

They are now saying the bombs where not in trash cans and they have a restaurant video showing someone putting down a black backpack and walking away.

I'm sure that will change but that is what's being said now.

sig Syren, bouncy by IceCat, bobble head by Tribephyl, and snoglobe by agman

The city probably put a lot of extra trash cans out on the route, especially the finish line.

Hysterical call demanding ball bearings be turned into a controlled substance with regulated and government-tracked sales: check.

May I quote you when one of my gun buddies goes off on how no one ever demands controls on any other weapon but guns? He plays some fun games with stats to try to prove other things are really worse.

*dark*I just hope this was not somebody deciding the way to get those Newtown people to shut up about gun control was to bomb their mile of a marathon dedicated to them.

Although the bomber in Atlanta 1996 turned out to be an anti-abortion nutcase (Eric Rudolph), I don't believe there has been another similar incident from a right-wing person since then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence

January 29, 1998: Robert Sanderson, an off-duty police officer who worked as a security guard at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, was killed when his workplace was bombed. Eric Robert Rudolph, who was also responsible for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing, was charged with the crime and received two life sentences as a result. Emily Lyons, a nurse, was severely injured, and lost an eye.

October 23, 1998: Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot to death with a high-powered rifle at his home in Amherst, New York. His was the last in a series of similar shootings against providers in Canada and northern New York state which were all likely committed by James Kopp. Kopp was convicted of Slepian's murder after finally being apprehended in France in 2001.

June 11, 2001: An unsolved bombing at a clinic in Tacoma, Washington destroyed a wall, resulting in $6,000 in damages.

September 11, 2006 David McMenemy of Rochester Hills, Michigan, crashed his car into the Edgerton Women's Care Center in Davenport, Iowa. He then doused the lobby in gasoline and started a fire. McMenemy committed these acts in the belief that the center was performing abortions; however, Edgerton is not an abortion clinic.

April 25, 2007: A package left at a women's health clinic in Austin, Texas, contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death. A bomb squad detonated the device after evacuating the building. Paul Ross Evans (who had a criminal record for armed robbery and theft) was found guilty of the crime.

May 31, 2009: Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed by Scott Roeder as Tiller served as an usher at church in Wichita, Kansas.

January 1, 2012 Bobby Joe Rogers, 41, firebombed the American Family Planning Clinic in Pensacola, Florida with a Molotov cocktail; the fire gutted the building. Rogers told investigators that he was motivated to commit the crime by his opposition to abortion, and that what more directly prompted the act was seeing a patient enter the clinic during one of the frequent anti-abortion protests there.

April 1, 2012 A bomb exploded on the windowsill of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, resulting in a fire that damaged one of the clinic's examination rooms. No injuries were reported. On April 3, the FBI arrested 50-year-old Francis Grady on charges of "arson of a building used in interstate commerce" and "intentionally damaging the property of a facility that provides reproductive health services".

Arizona's own Sheriff Fuhrer received an explosive package in the mail a few days ago: defused without harm. There's a chance we can file that under the librul column.

LAST EDITED ON 04-16-13 AT 11:57 AM (EST)

nm

Outlaw pressure cookers.

Well, there's the excuse Mayor Michael 'I was going to do it anyway' Bloomberg didn't need.

You had to hear his press conference. No matter what he said, it inevitably came out as one of two statements: 'I can't possibly leave office when the city clearly needs me so badly' and 'I've been looking for a reason to put cameras in all of your kitchens and charge fifteen percent of your income as a monitoring fee. And there it is!'

The Patriots Day Act.

My prayers are with all who were directly involved in this. Last I heard there were a lot of critical injuries, so the death toll might go up.

I don't think this is a home grown attack. Home grown would have targeted a building, an organization, a group, not a random crowd. Guess we'll see.

Do we know if any RTVW people were there and if so, are they ok?

Agman's Spring Fling '12.2

I wouldn't rule out home grown. Whoever planned this wanted media coverage and knew there would be film crews and photographers at that sight. They (he/she) wanted maximum media coverage.

Still, until a claim comes out for it, there is no knowing what agenda was behind this. A foreign terrorist agenda would have probably made a statement by now.

Personally, I think the whole thing is senseless, someone just wanted to make a big splash.

Mrs. Hobbs was saying why not the start line where there would be even more people? I'm waiting but I'm leaning home grown but there is a ton of idiots who are trying to blame Obama in the local paper comments.

sig Syren, bouncy by IceCat, bobble head by Tribephyl, and snoglobe by agman

Or if at the finish, why not when the winners were crossing and there would likely be live news coverage?

Let me know when they manage to explain how he personally set the bombs without being spotted or recorded in any way. With no statements from the usual suspects, I also think this is a native. (If it had been the President, it would then be a foreign organization.)

As noted above and below, there are a lot of better places and times along the course to maximize fatalities. Strategically, it's a strange choice for both.

From running CC and knowing Maratoners it seems that you have a running bring your things, in a backpack, from the start to the end. Now the race does do this but it's a pain as I've been told so most people do it themselves with someone. So seeing someone walking around with multiple backpacks is not strange.

As for video, whoever did this knew the finish is covered by a lot of camera's so if they are looking for a major DAW and maybe not max kill zone....that would be a good spot.

sig Syren, bouncy by IceCat, bobble head by Tribephyl, and snoglobe by agman

If things go as per his usualy MO, Obama supporters will blame Bush.

Seriously, I have yet to hear a claim from anybody that Obama is responsible, directly or indirectly. But, I haven't read the nut opinion pages of any or web site or newspaper.

I have. There's a reason I said not to go near the commentary sections. There are several.

Dubya blaming currently seems to be extinct.

Extinct since this morning, perhaps. Hopefully.

There were a bunch on the radio today....and that was a Sports station that had to finally cut off anyone bringing up the bombings because it got out of control on both sides.

sig Syren, bouncy by IceCat, bobble head by Tribephyl, and snoglobe by agman

My money's on a local/homegrown wacko. If a terrorist organization such as al Qaeda did this, they would've been crowing to the world about their great success for Allah. The silence points towards some local with a grudge.

I agree.

Also, as Hobbes' wife points out, a more professional approach would have been to plant bombs at the start where the confusion associated with the crowd of racers would have made it easier to plant the bombs, and the devastation would have been much greater. The finish line is a more dramatic setting perhaps, but it is more sparsely populated.

Plus why at the 4 hour mark....most of the racers where done and all that were left were charity runners and those in the highest age group.

sig Syren, bouncy by IceCat, bobble head by Tribephyl, and snoglobe by agman

One theory floated out there relating to this was that the guy tried several times to get into the restricted area where all the finished runners, families and officials were. Right now, we have no way of knowing how many times he tried to get in or how long beforehand he did so, but he was last seen trying to get in about five minutes prior to the first explosion.

Actually I just got done talking to my marathoner friend and he said there are the contenders and then 2 other groups that are sent out 1/2 hr apart. So the main group would be coming in at the 4 hour mark or 3 1/2 hour to 4 hours mark which is 9 minutes a mile.

sig Syren, bouncy by IceCat, bobble head by Tribephyl, and snoglobe by agman

Yup - I read that the largest group of people cross the finish line 3-1/2 to 4-1/2 hours after the elite group starts the race and the bombs went off at the 4 hour mark.

And he makes me feel really unfit.

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/10010376940318/78-year-old-runner-knocked-down-by-boston-blast/

78 year old guy running marathons?

And his son describes him as "really fast"?

Mucho admiration.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9176985/boston-marathon-explosion

Surprisingly, I've not been in a position to read/watch or fully catch up on any of this. I had to record this morning's news to be able to watch later.

Hoping this is not the case, but is it possible that this was staged to be small and look amateur in order to set up for something else bigger?

Samboobree, brought to life by Arkie

There is one terror expert who says it he thinks it could be a trial run for something bigger, but that just seems like speculation at this point.

Probably not, terrorists tend to like using surprise and hitting big targets, now there has been an attack everyone is a little more on edge and triple checking everything, particularly with big events, I know the Met Police have/are talking to the London marathon organisers to check their security, so any attack is more likely to fail.

Although I've seen a couple of comments from Spokane that they wonder if the thwarted bombing of the MLK walk couldn't have been a dry run for this bombing. That was a pipe bomb in a backpack and also placed in a way that would have taken out of a lot of legs if it had gone off.

A pipe bomb attempt, and now a pressure cooker bomb attempt. Who'd a thought that you could mix up a concoction with grandma's six-liter pressure cooker with nails and BB's and a bit of gunpowder with a kitchen stove clock ticking inside?

One explosives expert commented that if you can manage to make a homemade bomb like this and not blow yourself up, then you're not an amateur.