I was a little less than three blocks away on West 26th street when I heard the blast. Twenty-two years of living in Beirut had taught me to wait for the sirens before becoming concerned. And they came, distant at first, and then louder, followed by the clatter of a helicopter. But the New Yorkers enjoying the pop-up food court in Madison Square Park on that balmy Saturday night didn’t appear to be panicking.
Neither for that matter was CNN, which was covering the Black Caucus Foundation in Washington, attended by both President Barack Obama and the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. It would be an hour before it broke the news that an improvised explosive device (all attention seemed to focus on a beaten up pressure cooker lying in the road) had detonated in nearby Chelsea at around 20:30, injuring 29 people.
An hour later, I went out to grab something to eat and to see what was going on.
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