Looking South on Sixth Avenue, Herald Square.
After arriving at the Herald Square area about 1:30 p.m. from a doctor’s appointment – I biked in from Second Avenue and East 36th Street – and planning to hop the PATH back to Jersey City, and then seeing all the NYPDs coming into the area and POs roping off corners, and wondering what catastrophe was in the works until I heard a PO bark at a bunch of people to “move back” and maybe hearing something like, QMfE, “You don’t want to be near here … bomb,” or something like that, I started scurrying for a good shot.
So, as I was scurryng, I shot a bunch of images that might prove interesting later just to make sure I had something in the event that I couldn’t get anything that I really wanted: Like a bomb-sniffing German Shepherd or one of those moving mechanical robotic bomb dismantling devices like R2D2 or, I know this makes me sound like a nut, smoke and flames.
The POs were blocking off large swaths of the square. That meant I would l have to widen my scurrying.
I felt a chill when this image reminded me of those crowds watching before stampeding as the WTC towers began to fall. The words "blast radius" from The Hurt Locker I had watched the previous night poured into my brain. I moved on.
Sixth Avenue & 33rd Street, looking north.
Eventually, I realized that more scurrying was needed, that I would have to loop around to get near Eighth Avenue and more. I wasn’t up to it.
So, the event was a good reminder that there are people out there who want to kill New Yorkers and this could be the season for them – crazy Americans, crazy foreigners, crazy New Yorkers, et. al – to get their jollies. Ho-ho-ho.
I hopped the PATH home.
A news media report here.
Tags: bomb threats, Herald Square Suspicious Package, terrorists plots