buildings. and something else to the left of us and the whole thing stopped and they sent us away. big explosion as we were having lunch, we were sheltered under tables. i work in the provincial, but i don t know what s going on. we re at the lenox. elevator, the elevator shook the whole building, it was quite a blast. scared the hell out of us. i have watching the race, and we heard explosion and we knew it was a little louder than an m-80 cherry bomber, and we saw the smoke was right across the street from us basically. it was the most scariest thing i ve dealt with being on the fire department for 26 years. it was terrible scene. when i made the turn, i mean, the first pop, boom, then another one, boom! then another one, boom. it s like one after another, just one big cloud of smoke,
these twin bombings near the finish line at the boston marathon. a horrific, horrific scene, something no one expected on the day where nearly 27,000 participants in the boston marathon, half of them or so had just crossed the finish line. the other half were still running, but, of course, they immediately shut down the boston marathon and took major, major action. one member of the house homeland security committee now telling us on capitol hill that they ve been briefed by law enforcement sources who call this a sophisticated, coordinated, planned attack. let s talk about the video that we just saw, tom fuentes, former fbi assistant director is here, cnn contributor. this video, it may have been unsophisticated bomb, but it looked horrific, tom. looks horrific, but this video, i think, is pretty similar to the ones that we ve already seen, just have better sound quality and you can hear
cloud of smoke. then if you look closely, you can see a simultaneous explosion sending up smoke about a block away. boston s police commissioner says a third explosion has taken place at the jfk library, this within the past hour. we don t know the extent of that explosion. we don t know the extent of injuries at the jfk library. a state government official says there were no credible threats before the race, at least none known yet. security has been stepped up in boston and several other major cities, including new york city and washington, d.c., all of this out of an abundance of caution. we re deploying all of cnn s resources to bring you full team coverage of what s going on. a very important development on this day this boston. cnn executive producer matt frucci was on the scene at the time of the explosions. he was watching his brother run, participate in this marathon. tell our viewers, matt, what you
fatalities, it could have been much worse. if there would have been if those devices would have been more powerful, is that what you re saying? yes, i m saying that. and you could have had a knapsack full that would not have attracted anybody s attention because you have 20,000 spectators nearby, the majority of carrying backpacks with dry clothing for runners and food and water. for the police, that s an almost impossible scene to contain. you know, when you have 50,000 or 100,000 spectators at the super bowl, they re in a contained environment. you can settle up the magnetometers. when you have spectators over 26 miles and thousands in a large city square like that, it s virtually impossible for police to really secure that environment. one of our white house producers was in boston watching this marathon as well, adam eigner was at the scene when the bombings occurred. adam, where are you now and what are you seeing? yes, hi, wolf. i am right outside the westin actually ne
just down here where the evacuated area is. there is police tape up everywhere and crowds of people, many runners, who can t get back into their hotels. one thing i know in one of the alleyways where people have been gathering, a lot of the locals have been coming out of their houses and giving coffee and bananas and orange juice to the people who ran who are very underdressed for the slightly chilly day here in boston and who are just loving each other and sort of huddling together and talking and trying to stay warm. one of the men said, thank you very much, i d like to repay you for this. he said, this is just what humans do, what people do. it s a heartwarming scene of people coming out and helping each other. for a lot of people who are visiting here and come into the city to run the race and have nowhere to go. you were there as a participant, adam, or just watching? i was just watching, wolf. my stepsisters are runners, and one of them the professional runner was a competi