Houston Public Media Live Blogs

By Seth Lakso and Justin A. Rice, Globe Correspondents

It was an eerie scene on Berkley Street just after 6 p.m. as stunned marathoners with silver foils around their shoulders started collecting their possessions bundled in thousands of yellow bags on Berkley Street near the Boylston Street intersection.

“You got hundreds upon hundreds of bags,” Gary Morgan of Michigan, who was running his 11th Boston Marathon, said after claiming his bag.

Somber marathon voltmeters in yellow jackets laid out the bags, including Jenn and Molie Staretorp, who were a block away from the explosion. After ushering runners away from the blast they ran toward it.

“The runners seemed to kind of panic and then I don't know what happened but someone said something near the finish line and everyone started running,” Molie recalled. “So we just got off to the side and waited for everyone to pass and then we ran towards the finish line to see what we could do to help.

Jenn said everyone was confused after the blast.

“Mostly because they had no idea what was going on out there,” she said. “They're just running with no contact with the outside world and then people are giving them mixed directions. They just knew that they were cold. They didn't know where their bags [were], they don't know where their families are, so we've just been trying to help alleviate that a little bit.”

Marathoner Kate Gates of San Jose, Calif. was collecting her bag. She said she was around Mile 21 or 22 when the race was stopped and runners who had their smartphones where spreading the word about the bombing.

“Very quickly most runners understood the severity of it,” said Gates, who was running her ninth Boston Marathon and 43rd overall marathon. “They were glad we were safe and put themselves in the big picture right away.”

She said she asked a spectator to borrow a cell phone so she could alert family that she was OK.

“I’ve never seen such generosity,” she said. “On the way back I got multiple offers from college students to use their cell phone or asked if I wanted water or coffee.”

Camcorder in hand, MassArt student Esteban Mendoza Rollerbladed to the scene of the bag pickup. He said he was on his way to Copley to shoot video for a class project when he decided to stop at his Cambridge apartment to take a nap.

“It was pretty unreal,” he said. “The fact that I went to sleep and people were waking me up to tell me there was a bombing, that kind of scared me; 9/11 happened when I was in middle school. For it to happen in my area … this kind of stuff can happen to you, you never know where it’s going to happen.”

Via Boston.com's Pack Up blog and Melanie Nayer: Airlines, hotels waive fees for Boston travelers http://www.boston.com/travel/explorene/blogs/packup/2013/04/airlines_hotels_waive_fees_for.html