Thursday, March 06, 2008

More pictures from Times Square

This morning I finished my work early and checked out of the hotel around 9AM. I walked the three blocks to the Army recruiting center where the explosion took place, to get a few pictures.

Traffic was moving well, and other than a lot of tourists (like me) taking pictures and milling around, it was basically a normal weekday morning in Times Square. The blast occurred about 5 hours earlier, and I'm relieved to see the terrorist chose not to injure the thousands of people who would have been in the area during rush hour.

This is where the bomb exploded. You can see obvious damage to the door and a lot of glass, but other than that it doesn't seem like much. It was loud, though, even up on the 35th floor.

This is the press conference on the same island as the recruiting center, which would be to the right of this image. Mayor Bloomberg spoke to the media, along with other NYC officials. The mood in the area was sort of casual. Nobody seemed on edge at all.

Here's the view from next to the center looking north at the press conference. The damaged area is just around the front of that building on the left.

I stood on the same spot as the previous picture and turned around and shot this image of the NYPD sub-station. I'd imagine the cops on duty there must have jumped out of their skins when that thing went off! I was probably 600 feet away when it exploded, and it woke me out of a sound sleep; they were maybe 75 feet from it!

Finally, the Chrysler Building looms over Grand Central Terminal. Because it was a nice day and I had my camera with me.

2 comments:

Adam J Schmidt said...

The Chrysler Building is my favorite in the city - it's simply gorgeous. Glad to hear that no one was hurt; hopefully the criminal will by caught before he's tempted to escalate his attacks.

CT Bob said...

Adam, yeah it's my favorite too. No building in the city comes close.

There's some talk that this bomber may have struck before at various embassies in NYC. If so, it might be a nutjob that's responsible. That's almost scarier than terrorists, because there's no anticipation what a crazy person might do.