Several Akron-area runners were close enough to the Boston Marathon finish line to hear the bomb blasts Monday, signaling the start of a day full of anguish, fatigue and frustration.
Runner Beth Bugner of Medina was in the medical tent near the finish line, just feet away from the blast, being treated for exhaustion.
“I heard it but couldn’t see it because of the tent,” said the Akron public school teacher. “I said, ‘that sounded like a bomb’ and it happened again a few seconds later.”
Her first thought was to find the people she was traveling with.
“The volunteers were screaming that everybody had to leave instantly and the ambulances were coming in so fast,” she said.
Emergency medical personnel, already on site to help any runners, started treating the wounded.
Public transportation was soon suspended and the only way runners could move was on foot. After running more than 26 miles, Bugner and a group with her had to walk several more miles before securing a car to drive to their lodging 20 miles outside the city.
It took four hours before she was able to get cellphone service and call home.
“We still [had] our medals on and our numbers on,” she said.
Jeannine Nicholson was also among the runners from Medina. She had just crossed the finish line when she heard the explosions.
“There wasn’t panic right away,” she said.
She was among about 10 people from the Medina Running Club who went to Boston, some of them renting a house in nearby Salem. That’s where Jeannine and her husband, Medina Township police officer Cliff Nicholson, left their two small children and a baby sitter.
Downtown Boston was too crowded during the race so they didn’t want to have their children waiting there. After the explosions, they were grateful they followed their initial instincts.
They didn’t see any injured, but after the second explosion realized something bad had happened.
The Nicholsons quickly made haste to get out of the area. They boarded a subway before the mass transit system was shut down.
“I wanted to get out of there,” Jeannine said. “My husband kept a level head. I was a mess.”
Not far behind Jeannine Nicholson in the marathon was Ladd Clifford, also of Medina. He too had just passed the finish line when he heard the booms and saw the clouds of smoke from the twin explosions.
“Almost immediately I assumed it was terrorists,” he said.
He said he was lucky enough to be able to retrieve his gym bag so he had his driver’s license and a credit card. He said he was able to persuade a rental car agent to let him rent a second rental car to get out of the city. They could not get to the first one they had rented when they arrived at the airport.
Unfinished race
Another member of the Medina contingent was Roberta Gangl, who wasn’t able to finish the race because of the turmoil.
Gangl, 51, a teacher at Ralph Waite Elementary School in Medina, was stopped by race officials about a half mile from the finish line.
She along with a fellow runner arrived back in Ohio on Monday night on the last AirTran flight of the day to leave Boston for Akron.
“I was running very slow, I was struggling through the marathon,” said Gangl. “So I was a half-mile from the finish line and all of a sudden people were milling around and they said the marathon was canceled. It stopped.”
Meanwhile, her running mate, Debbie Hicks, a fellow teacher at Medina’s Fenn Elementary School, had just finished the race and was gathering her belongings when she heard two loud explosions.
“I sat down to put my sweatpants on because I was getting really cold and I heard the explosion go off,” she said. “And about 30 seconds later, another one went off. And I said to the guy sitting next to me ‘what was that?’ and he said ‘I have no idea.’ ”
Hicks then began to worry about Gangl, who should have been to the finish line by then.
The area around the finish line, Hicks said, quickly became chaotic with rescue workers and police officers rushing toward the blast areas.
“We’re trying to text each other,” said Hicks. “A text would go through every once in a while. Our families were so worried, they kept calling us and texting us and we were just trying to get ahold of each other.”
Aside from finding each other, the next challenge for Hicks and Gangl was to make it to the airport in time for their flight home.
“There was no way you could get a cab,” Hicks said. “The cabs weren’t even stopping.”
Thanks to the generosity of a Boston couple, Erin and Steve O’Neal, they were able to hitch a ride back to their hotel and then to the airport.
“They were our guardian angels,” said Hicks. “Without them, we would not have made our flight. Subways were shut down, cellphone service went down.”
Bret Treier of Akron was two blocks away from the blast and he will remain there for much of today.
“We heard the first blast and it seemed unusual and then we heard the second blast which was much stronger,” he said.
He was immediately told to go into his small hotel and not leave. Later, emergency personnel told him he could not leave because of a 24-hour lockdown in the 15-block area around the blast.
Security in Akron
Treier is course chairman for the Akron Marathon and said events in Boston will make Akron leaders rethink security for the Sept. 28 event.
“We know we have emergency plans but this will certainly have us revisit and focus on those,” he said.
Treier finished in three hours, 29 minutes and was preparing to go into his hotel when he heard the blasts.
The Boston Marathon is run in three waves. The third and slowest wave was just about to finish when the explosions came at the finish line, causing a huge logistics problem for officials.
“One of the fascinating things from a marathon perspective, you have emergency plans, but think of the challenge of a point-to-point course where [runners] were not really local,” Treier said. “People could have been as far away as five or 10 miles away from the finish. They would have to divert them and then figure out a way to get them transported back to the downtown area where their loved ones or accommodations were.”
Concern about friends
Akron Marathon Executive Director Anne Bitong was in Akron when she heard about the blast via a news text message.
Her thoughts immediately turned to the handful of local runners participating in the world famous event. She couldn’t remember exactly how many, but she knew at least some who volunteer on the Akron event’s committees were there.
A brief telephone call less than two hours later brought news that the area runners were safe.
Bitong knows it could happen in Akron, too.
“We certainly work with the emergency professionals in the city of Akron, emergency forces, and we have a very thorough crisis plan,” she said.
She also is involved with two national organizations that follow the running field, Running USA and U.S. Track & Field.
“[Running USA members] normally have an industry conference every year and crisis management plan was a topic at the past conference in February,” she said.
For security reasons, she was reluctant to say how many officers work to keep the Akron race safe. She said the event has both uniformed and plain-clothes officers.
“We certainly have a hierarchy of staff to respond to an emergency situation,” she said.
Akron’s event does not have the international prestige of the Boston Marathon, but it is a huge event with substantial security risks.
Last year, 15,000 participated in the Akron race and as many as 18,000 might be involved this year.
The Boston Marathon database shows 608 runners from Ohio and about two dozen or so from the Akron area.
Dave Scott can be reached at 330-996-3577 or davescott@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow Scott on Twitter at Davescottofakro. Staff writer Carol Biliczky and correspondent Fred Cay contributed to this article.