'You could feel it in your body': Witnesses recount NYC blast
Witnesses to the blast in New York City on Saturday night said it was something they won't soon forget:
'It was major'
Ramon Lopez was at West 23rd and 6th Avenue when the explosion happened. “It felt like a building was coming down,” said the 48-year-old East Harlem resident.
He ran about a half block away then turned around and ran back to the scene to help people. He spotted a woman with a metal fragment in her eye saying, “I can’t see. I can’t see.” Lopez took her by the arm to an ambulance that had just arrived on the scene.
Lopez saw other victims bleeding from small spherical fragments and metal shards.
“I was telling (the victims) it was minor, but it was major,” he said. “If I told them it was major they would collapse.”
'You could feel it in your body'
Klaas Claes, co-owner of BXL Zoute, a Belgian restaurant on West 22nd near the blast scene, said the explosion sounded like the rear gate slamming on a large dump truck, "only ten times louder."
"You could feel it in your body, it was very powerful'" said Claes.
He and some restaurant customers ran outside, but saw no immediate signs of fire or smoke, Claes said.
Police and fire department responders arrived at the scene moments later, he said.
'Everyone just went quiet'
Chris Gonzalez, visiting from Dallas, was having dinner with friends at a restaurant in the area.
"We felt it. We heard it,” Gonzalez told the Associated Press. “It wasn’t like jolting or anything. Everyone just went quiet."
'The windows were shaking'
Rudy Alcide, a bouncer at Vanity Nightclub at 21st Street and 6th Avenue, told the Associated Press he first thought something large had fallen.
“It was an extremely loud noise. Everything was shaking, the windows were shaking,” he said. “It was extremely loud, almost like thunder but louder.”
'Concussive wave'
Luke McConnell, who was visiting from Colorado, told the New York Times he was headed toward a restaurant on West 27th Street when, “I felt it, like a concussive wave, heading towards me.”
“Then there was a cloud of white smoke that came from the left side of 23rd Street near Sixth,” he said. “There was no fire, just smoke.”
'Circle of fire'
“It was red, orange in the middle. It was a circle of fire,” Deborah Griffith told the New York Daily News. “The whole block shook. The fire was up in the air. People were running for their lives.”