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THE FIRST RESPONDERS

Close-up view mobilized Boston EMS personnel

Boston EMT Walter Dunbar was inspired to form a team of runners after witnessing “the best and the worst of mankind” at the finish area last year.Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff/Globe Staff

Stationed at the intersection of Berkeley and Stuart Streets, near the family greeting area where runners who had just completed the 117th Boston Marathon were reunited with loved ones, Walter Dunbar, an emergency medical technician with Boston EMS, soaked up the atmosphere as he stood among the revelers with his partner, Joanne Dance.

“In terms of joy along the route, it was probably the peak for a lot of people,’’ said Dunbar, “because they had just finished their marathon, they had just met their families, and everyone was saying ‘PR!’ for their personal records.

“And then we heard the first explosion.’’

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Dunbar immediately turned to Dance, with whom he shared a bewildered look.

It was the first of two explosions that erupted at the Boylston Street finish line, turning the euphoria into terror. When the Boston EMS unit commander put out a call for tourniquets and bandages at the finish line, Dunbar and Dance raced toward it, swimming against a tide of humanity fleeing the area.

“We were all aware there could have been a third device, so they wanted everyone to hold their positions,’’ said Dunbar, 37, of Jamaica Plain. “But everyone took it upon themselves to rush in and help, so we headed toward the finish line.’’

Boston EMS paramedic Sharon Efstathiou was stationed at Cleveland Circle when her radio crackled with a report of an explosion.

“We were like, ‘An explosion?’ ’’ recalled Efstathiou, 39, of North Attleborough. “We figured it was probably a manhole cover or a transformer or something like that. But when the unit commander requested tourniquets and bandages, I could hear the urgency in his voice.’’

After the second explosion, Efstathiou and her ambulance, siren blaring, rolled toward Boylston Street, as a call went out for all available units. They, too, encountered difficulty getting to their destination, but from a logjam of runners who had been abruptly stopped on the route.

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“Because we have so many EMT details along the route — in golf carts, on bicycles, on foot — I felt like some of my co-workers must have been injured or killed,’’ Dunbar said. “So there was that lurking in the back of your head, plus it was that feeling it was not fair that it happened to all these people who were here to celebrate such a wonderful thing.’’

As first responders, Dunbar and Efstathiou put in hours of mass casualty incident training year-round. But nothing short of combat triage experience could prepare them for the carnage they found at the medical tent.

Dunbar was struck by a smell from burn wounds that he likened to “burnt leather’’ and by the range of injuries he encountered in the tent, where he saw a runner on a cot rubbing an injured ankle next to a cot on which lay the corpse of Krystle Campbell beneath a sheet.

“It was the most horrific scene I could imagine, and I might’ve paused for two or three seconds, but I went to work right after that,’’ Dunbar said. “Even though we were experiencing this attack, too, we had a job to do and at that point you just have to switch into EMT mode.”

The survivors’ stories inspired Dunbar in December to form a team of eight co-workers — the BostonEMStrong Marathon team — that was invited by the Boston Athletic Association to take part in the 118th Boston Marathon. He and Efstathiou will be joined by EMTs Felicia Mohammed, Steve Garceau, Frank Deaton, and Dan Morgan, and paramedics Doug Williams and Roger Hamlet.

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For Efstathiou, the inspiration came when she participated in a charity softball event at Fenway Park against a team of veterans from the Wounded Warrior Project.

“You had some double amputees on that team and they just kicked our [butt],’’ she marveled.

Dunbar was inspired after witnessing “the best and the worst of mankind’’ as strangers came together to help in the aftermath of this shattering event.

“For me, the whole act of running the marathon and training for it was a way of putting the pieces back together,’’ he said. “As I strived to become a better runner, everything else got better. I tried to become a better EMT, a better father, a better husband.

“By the time you get to the finish line, to me that’s going to be like grabbing the Holy Grail. It’s been a quest.”

Dunbar’s 16-week training regimen included 118 miles in March in honor of the 118th Marathon.

He has run the route several times from the start up to Mass. Ave., but has never gone the distance by making the left turn at Hereford Street onto Boylston for the home stretch.

“That’s like sacred ground for me, and I don’t want to experience it until it’s time,’’ Dunbar said. “I think the energy of the people there will just carry you.

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“But my race won’t end at the finish line. My finish line will be at Berkeley and Stuart Street, where I began the race last year. That’s when it’ll come full circle for me.’’


Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com.