Tanya Carter of Prince George crossed the finish line about five minutes before explosions rocked the 117th edition of the Boston Marathon, leaving two people dead and dozens injured.
"Just after I went through the finish line, I heard this loud explosion, it sounded like a cannon, and I turned around and I saw this huge ball of smoke," said the Prince George native about 10 minutes after arriving back at her hotel in Cambridge. "Then there was another loud explosion. It sounded like a cannon. It was just disbelief, I thought, well no, they wouldn't be shooting off a cannon at the finish line because it would scare the runners who are so focused on getting across the finish line without falling."
The 45-year-old said there was complete chaos after that.
"You could see the panic on their faces, maybe remembering 9/11 because they were very scared and people started rushing through the line and running," said Carter. "They knew it was a bomb. They were scared. There were people crying."
Carter said, perhaps because she's Canadian and wasn't directly impacted by 9/11, she was able to help reassure some of the others as they made their way towards the family gathering place a few blocks away.
"I was just speaking to everybody telling them to keep moving forward and to keep calm and keep walking," said Carter. "I was afraid there was going to be a stampede.
"I got to a safe area where I could change," she added. "My main focus was to get to the family area where my husband [Kevin] and my coworker Steve Martin, who had finished half an hour ahead of me, were waiting. My main focus was to get there but, of course, we kept getting rerouted on the road as the police and ambulances and fire trucks and everything was coming through."
Kevin Carter and Martin's wife Lucy had left their spot, about half a kilometre away from the finish line, minutes before the explosions occurred, and along with thousands of other people were heading to the meeting place to reunite with loved ones after their race.
"All of a sudden they all turned around and started running back towards us," said Kevin, too far away to hear the explosions. "People were screaming that there were bombs and explosions, some thought it was gun shots, it was just like mass hysteria. Most people didn't really know what was going on, they were just hearing it from other people along the way. Nobody knew what was going on. We ducked into a restaurant to kind of get out of the way. Then we realized we had to go find our spouses.
"We were running against the group of people who were running away from the scene," he recalled. "I was terrified. I knew that my wife had just crossed the finish line probably minutes before this happened."
Kevin and Lucy eventually arrived at the family meeting place where Lucy was reunited with Martin, but it was about 20 minutes before Kevin found his wife.
"It was very, very scary," said Kevin. "I was ecstatic when I saw her standing there. I saw her first and she had this worried look on her face because she didn't know if I was caught near it."
Once reunited, the two couples needed to find a way out of downtown Boston and back to their hotel in Cambridge, about 30 to 45 minutes away. With all the buses and rail lines shut down, the group was told by police their best bet would be to walk.
But, luck was on their side and Martin was able to flag down a passing taxi.
"I just jumped in front of him, hollered at him and he stopped and took us right out of the downtown area," said Martin, his voice shaking as a TV report in his hotel room reported the two fatalities.
"It's very sad," said Martin.
Before the explosions occurred, Martin said it was a perfect day.
"The atmosphere all day was just very much fun," said Martin. "It was an awesome run in an awesome city. It was just an incredible day until this happened."
It was the first time Martin and Carter ran in the Boston Marathon, both having ran the qualifying times at the Kelowna Marathon in 2011. Martin finished in three hours, 24 minutes and 56 seconds (3:24:56) and Carter's official time was 4:04:16. A third local runner, Dennis Straussfogel, 56, couldn't be reached by the Citizen but the official results listed him as finishing in 3:37:07. Race officials said there were 4,496 runners that crossed the 24-mile checkpoint but didn't make the finish line.
It was Patriots Day in the United States so hundreds of soldiers were visible on the course.
"I don't know if they were marching the course or if they were actually standing guard," said Carter. "We were paying tribute as we ran by to them."
The couples are scheduled to return Friday to Prince George.
