Shelton EMT Jamie Goldstein has friends from college in the Boston area, so he thought it would be fun to volunteer to serve at Monday’s Boston Marathon.
He and Casey Quake, another volunteer from Shelton’s Echo Hose Ambulance, were stationed a couple of miles from the finish line during the race yesterday enjoying the event when one of the marathoners asked them a disconcerting question.
“We actually found out (about the bombing) first from a runner who got a text message from her family member,” Goldstein said. “She asked if they stopped the race. We thought she was joking.”
They soon learned the awful truth — that twin explosions had rocked the race’s finish line and injured scores of people.
Click here for coverage of the bombing from the Boston Globe.
Three people died in the explosions, and more than 130 people were being treated for injuries Tuesday due to the bombing — 17 of them in critical condition.
Click here for live updates from the New York Times.
In the chaos in the first few minutes after the bombs went off, the main goal was crowd control, Goldstein said Monday morning.
“We just kept people moving,” he said.
“Once they shut down the race they moved us to about a mile closer, and we just waited,” he went on. “We never made it to the blast site, nor did we have any contact with patients up that way.”
It was frustrating to not be able to do more, he said, but they couldn’t get clearance from authorities who had cordoned off the area.
Click here to read a story about the scene at Boston hospitals Monday.
“We had equipment to help people,” Goldstein said. “We were so close yet so far away.”
Even so, he and Quake had their hands full with crowd control and helping runners with their families, he said.
Goldstein said the two were on the scene until about 6:30 p.m.
They then spent the night in Boston and planned to head back to Connecticut Tuesday.
His friends from Boston?
“They’re OK,” Goldstein said.
