Open Thread: Boston Marathon Bombings

Many of the spectators at the Boston Marathon had cameras on hand

Once again, we’re hearing that the FBI will release photos of persons of interest in the Boston Marathon bombing. One image is a screen grab from a video and the other is a still photo. One image comes from the site of the first explosion and the second comes from the second bombing site.

I’m listening to WBUR right now, and the news conference is just beginning. I’ll add more to this post after I listen to the announcement. If you’re watching on TV, please chime in. I don’t want to miss anything by running in the other room to turn on the TV.

Agent Des Lauriers says these are the only images the public should trust–any others you see on-line or in newspapers are not relevant.

The images can be viewed at the FBI website, which is opening very slowly, unsurprisingly.

Here are two relevant links that I found before the press conference began.

The Boston Globe: Feds using photo analysis in Boston case

USA Today: Investigators to release images of two men near Marathon bomb sites

Here’s the video released by the FBI:

Screen grabs from the FBI website:

FBI Press Conference Video:

From the FBI Website:

To Provide Tips in the Investigation

If you have visual images, video, and/or details regarding the explosions along the Boston Marathon route and elsewhere, submit them on https://bostonmarathontips.fbi.gov/. No piece of information or detail is too small.

You can also call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), prompt #3, with information.
All media inquiries should be directed to the FBI’s National Press Office at (202) 324-3691.

– Boston FBI
– Boston Police Department

Some information on the victims of the bombings:

The Boston Globe: A list of known victims so far.

Time: The Boston Bombings: Peculiar Benefits of the 9/11 Wars

Within hours of the Boston Marathon bombing Monday, the Navy dispatched a three-member team from Newport, R.I., to try to help to track down the perpetrators. As word spread of multiple amputations among the victims, military doctors agreed that their skills at outfitting troops with prosthetics could help those maimed in Boston.

But beyond that obvious help, the military has learned lessons since 9/11 that are all too applicable in the wake of the Boston bombings.

“Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are many people in the country that are skilled in treating traumatic injuries like amputations and traumatic brain injuries,” Alex Horton, an Iraq-war veteran who now blogs for the VA, noted Tuesday. “Physicians have a larger breadth of knowledge about these injuries than a dozen years ago, and lessons learned from the wars undoubtedly saved many lives in operating rooms in and around Boston.”

In a post on the VA’s Vantage Point blog, Horton noted that many of those first on the scene to tend to the casualties had learned their skills in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Boston Globe: 5-year-old boy among Marathon bombing victims who are ‘getting better’ at Boston Medical Center

A 5-year-old boy grievously injured in Monday’s Marathon bombings is getting better, according to Boston Medical Center Chief of Trauma Services Peter Burke, and is no longer listed in critical condition….

The boy suffered soft tissue injuries to his extremities and “significant pulmonary injuries,” Burke said. The pulmonary injuries, he said, were likely caused either by compression from the blast or from being thrown into something. His mother was injured and is at a different hospital.

Burke discussed the similarities between the injuries in Boston and those encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sixteen patients remain in the hospital, Burke said: one 60-year-old man is still in critical condition, 10 patients are in serious condition and five are in fair condition; doctors expect to reoperate on two patients today. In the past 48 hours, he said, three patients have been discharged.

Doctors at BMC have amputated seven limbs on five patients, he said….

Several patients still require more surgeries, Burke said.

“These injuries are massive and require multiple trips to the operating room sometimes,” said Burke.

If doctors close wounds in one single operation, he said, they risk infection. Instead, wounds must be cleaned several times. Doctors have removed metal and concrete from patients, he said, and infection is one of the biggest concerns.

Patients are also suffering emotional repercussions, including flashbacks of the bombings.

An update: 5-year-old Boston bomb victim no longer critical

Burke says the boy, whose name has not been released, had significant soft tissue injuries and pulmonary injuries. He says a blast can often compress a child’s chest, bruising the lungs and heart. Burke says he’s pleased with the boy’s progress.

ABC News: Boston Marathon Bomber Wanted to Kill ‘as Many People as Possible’

The bombmakers behind the Boston Marathon explosions weren’t looking to scare people, a trauma surgeon with nine years of military experience told ABCNews.com.

They intended to kill, said former Navy surgeon Dr. Gary Schwendig.

“That person or those people did everything they could to create a bomb that damaged and injured as many people as they possibly could,” said Schwendig, who now works at Scripps Health in San Diego.

It won’t be clear for some time how many patients will need to have limbs amputated.

Many victims of the Boston Marathon bombings face possible amputations in the coming days and months, hospitals reported.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital has already performed one amputation, and is working to save another patient’s injured limb. Massachusetts General Hospital has amputated four limbs so far, and is treating two patients who could face amputation in the coming days. At Tufts Medical Center, doctors have not yet performed any full amputations, but four victims have limb-threatening injuries.

A trauma expert in the article says that amputation is often better choice than trying to save a mangled arm or leg. The process of trying to save an extremity can take years and be extremely painful. Even then, amputation may become necessary in the long run.

LA Times: Many Boston victims require limb amputations

It may have lacked the dust and dirt of battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Monday’s bomb attack on the Boston Marathon produced a number of injuries rarely seen outside of war zones — traumatic limb amputations.

Medicine has made great strides in the reattachment of severed limbs in the last two decades, but the nature of bomb blast injuries makes such repairs impossible.

“The only types of injuries that can be re-implanted are those involving clean separations, like a limb that’s been cut off by a sword or industrial machinery that cleanly cuts the arm or leg off,” said Dr. Jeffrey Eckardt, chairman of the orthopedic surgery department at UCLA. “With an explosion, whole sections of the bone and muscles are gone. Vessels and nerves get pulled and stretched and yanked.”

I’ve been unable to find organized information about how many victims were initially brought in to hospitals in critical condition, but this morning I heard on NPR that 62 victims were still being treated in various Boston area hospitals. Some could have been released today. As of yesterday–two days after the bombings–14 patients were still classified as critical, but all are expected to recover.

Two children are still in critical condition.

An 11-year-old California boy and a 9-year-old girl are in critical condition at Boston Children’s Hospital following the deadly bombings at the Boston Marathon. A 5-year-old boy is in critical condition at Boston Medical Center.

Aaron Hern, of Martinez, Calif., has undergone multiple operations, including three to four hours of surgery on Wednesday to further treat his badly injured leg, including removing shrapnel and damaged tissue. His 12th birthday is May 1.

The 9-year-old girl also has a severe leg injury.

I just found some information on those who have been released from hospitals. (HuffPo) The article gives specifics on how many patients each hospital had and how many are still critical.

As Dakinikat has pointed out to me, all the focus on the events in Boston is probably inappropriate since there are hundreds (thousands?) of worse bombings every day all over the world.

I guess because I live here, I’m inordinately interested in and emotionally involved with the situation, but I realize not everyone is. Of course for people in New England and those who run marathons, these events will signal a dramatic change. As Charles Pierce wrote, Patriots Day and the Boston Marathon will never be the same.

The Marathon was the old, drunk uncle of Boston sports, the last of the true festival events. Every other one of our major sporting rodeos is locked down, and tightened up, and Fail-Safed until the Super Bowl now is little more than NORAD with bad rock music and offensive tackles. You can’t do that to the Marathon. There was no way to do it. There was no way to lock down, or tighten up, or Fail-Safe into Security Theater a race that covers 26.2 miles, a race that travels from town to town, a race that travels past people’s houses. There was no way to garrison the Boston Marathon. Now there will be. Someone will find a way to do it. And I do not know what the race will be now. I literally haven’t the vaguest clue.

I had actually started writing a post on the explosion in Texas, but then the FBI press conference suddenly came up. This will be my last post on the situation here in Boston unless truly dramatic news of national interest breaks.