Community Corner
Hours After Boston Marathon Explosion: 'It's Like a Ghost Town Here'
West Hartford resident Kim Cowherd-Iacovazzi talks about the scene in Boston where she is with her husband Vito Iacovazzi, who finished running the marathon about 30 minutes before the explosion.
Kim Cowherd-Iacovazzi said she was feeling a bit claustrophobic near the finish line of Monday's Boston Marathon even before anything happened.
"I got a great spot. I was standing one-person back for about 2 1/2 hours. It was six or seven deep," Cowherd-Iacovazzi, a West Hartford resident, said of the place she staked out to watch her husband, Vito Iacovazzi, complete his first Boston Marathon.
"I had a moment – God forbid we had to get out," Cowherd-Iacovazzi said. Leaving the finish line, she said she told her husband that she really didn't like that feeling of being trapped.
Vito Iacovazzi, 53, finished the marathon with a "gun time" of 3:48:30 (net time of 3:45:23) – about 30 minutes before the explosions. Cowherd-Iacovazzi said they were already in the family zone when it happened, and although she didn't hear anything, others told her it sounded like cannons.
"That's exactly where we were standing," she said, when she heard where one of the explosions took place.
Monday night they were at the Hyatt, which Cowherd-Iacovazzi said is only about a half mile from the finish line.
"They're telling us 'don't leave, stay in your hotels,'" she said. "It's a very somber atmosphere, and it's so sad." Cowherd-Iacovazzi said that the police are telling people to stay indoors, and she and her husband are glued to the TV coverage.
"It's like a ghost town, very eerie," she said.
Cowherd-Iacovazzi is one of the organizers of the West Hartford Relay, along with her husband and Sarah Fite, and although this was Vito Iacovazzi's first Boston Marathon both are veterans of other large-scale races.
Iacovazzi was one of 14 West Hartford runners who had posted finish times before the race was ended by two explosions. According to baa.org, there were 29 West Hartford registrants, but seven of those appear not to have run at all, and the finish times for eight others were not recorded although earlier split times were posted.
"We've done New York and experienced mass chaos, but this is madness," Cowherd-Iacovazzi said. "The runners are very safe, but it's the spectators."
"The unsettling thing is just the unknown," she said.
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