BOSTON (AP) -- Bruce Mendelsohn was attending a post-race party in an office building just above the Boston Marathon finish line when an explosion knocked him to the floor.
"There was like a flash, then a giant boom," he said. "The concussion blew me off the couch onto the ground."
The former Army medic rushed outside to find blood, glass and debris everywhere. He began applying pressure to gruesome wounds.
"This stuff is more like Baghdad and Bombay than Boston," said Mendelsohn, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It was pretty terrifying."
Phil Kenkel was approaching the finish line when the two explosions happened just moments apart. The first made him wonder if it was a prank, the second stirred "sheer terror."
Emily Biglin Valentine thanked God she ran a good time.
Only a half-hour before the bombing, the Novi, Mich., woman's husband and friend had been cheering her one from one of the blast sites.
The three were walking to a train when they heard explosions that sounded like cannon fire.