Boston Marathon Bombing Sends Shockwaves Across Country

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Monday's terror attack near the finish line of the Boston Marathon shocked the country and touched communities far from Massachusetts.

The Boston Marathon is a national and international event, drawing participants and spectators from far away. When the bombs went off, they reverberated among families, friends and people who joined vigils honoring the victims.

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More than 100 Iowans were in Boston during the bombing, including 158 who were registered to run in the marathon. To be sure, Iowans are among those sharing in the pain.

In Marion, organizers of the Marion Rotary Marathon for Shoes, a fundraiser to provide footware for kids in need, are taking a closer look at security and will be observing a moment of silence this weekend. In Ames, authorities will be extra vigilant at VEISHEA in the wake of the Boston Marathon attack. , watched her eighth place finish among women get overshadowed.

Runners from West Des Moines captured some of the panic felt by Iowans and all at the scene.

“It was a surreal thing to hear those blasts, to see people running and the confusion at the scene,” Matt McDermott said. “We figured if nothing else, we need to go upstairs and wait this out and see what happened. We didn’t bother with elevator, took the stairs right up to the fourth floor.”

Read more:

News Trickles in from Iowans at Boston Marathon Explosion: 'It Was Going Downhill in a Hurry'

To illustrate the reach of this story, we've created this interactive map which displays every Patch site that wrote a story about local people touched by the attack. Each marker on the map is clickable and includes the name of the local person connected to the story and a link to their story.

The 400+ markers on the map are, naturally, clustered around where Patches are in 22 states. It's notable that this story penetrated all of those clusters. There were always vigils, relatives, local runners, or people who needed to talk about the attack. Patch's wide network of coverage shows how the attack that killed three and wounded over 100 intimately affected the lives of Americans across the country.