If a car blows up in Turin...
You should immediately head in that direction. At least, that's what I did.
No, no, mom, it's ok, you don't have to call. This is what happened. I was walking back from my failed attempt to hide in the figure skating venue and wait for tonight's grand finale (more on that later), and as I neared the media center I ran into dozens of security/police types and hundreds of journalist types. The main road outside the media center was closed, but just when I got there it opened and all these photographers and camera men started sprinting down the road. My pizza-plus-pizza diet has left me unable to sprint, so I ambled after the sprinters, who were by now jumping up fences and frantically taking pictures of everything, including each other (really).
A tow truck was carting away a red Honda with blown out windows, and that became the center of the media maelstrom. Well, that, plus the shattered glass in the parking lot, which was surrounded by camera man angling to get the most dramatic "small pile of shattered glass in a dumpy parking lot" shot.
Then the mass of journalists began to form a circular pattern, like a quickly developing tornado, and at the center was a young police guy and me. The police guy began the briefing like this: "False Alarm."
What happened: the police received a call, saying that two guys had parked this red Honda outside this apartment building and then walked away with the car still running. The car had a Spanish registration. The police couldn't open the doors. So they got some sort of permission from a judge, and used a "controlled explosion" to open the doors. Inside, they found nothing suspicious. Then they called a tow truck. They're still trying to locate the two guys. This was courtesy of Captain Cesario Totaro. It was also the closest I came to being an actual reporter in the two-plus weeks I've been here.
Once I realized nothing really happened, I stopped being an actual reporter and started trying to take pictures with my cell phone camera of the mass of humanity that was crushing me from behind. Mostly I just took pictures of the guy directly behind me and his camera.
By Dan Steinberg |
February 23, 2006; 12:15 PM ET
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Next: My first figure skating experience
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» Car blown up at the Olympics" from "PenguinSix.com
It wasn't anything cool, but Olympic security decided to blow up a car that was left running outside a building. A 'controlled explosing' blew up the car, that turned out to be not much more than a false alarm. Reminds... read more »
Tracked on February 23, 2006 01:11 PM
Posted by: Wise Girls-DC | February 23, 2006 01:52 PM
Hello,
right in front of where the car was abandoned is my daughter's kindergarden. When they fenced the area around the car, they did not notice ther was a kindergarden. So when a teacher comes out wondering what was going on the policeman yells "what are you doing there lady? Come out, you can't stay there, there migt be a bomb in that car" and she answers "what the hell are you talking about? there are about a hundred children in here, and 20 adults inside here!" So they evacuated the kids very quickly and moved them to the gymnasium of a school nearby.
Gifo
Posted by: Gifo | February 24, 2006 09:28 AM
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Perhaps this was Wise's idea of an international incident?
Has he been accounted for yet today?HA!
Be safe...