15:28

Jamiles Lartey and Paul Owen are reporting from midtown Manhattan, where dozens of police cars, armored trucks and fire department vehicles have swarmed and officers have blocked off stretches of 8th Avenue.

Rolling a large suitcase, Tina Grimes, 38, was supposed to be getting on a bus to Boston. “I came early to catch a bus around 8 and I’m just like, ‘Whoa what’s going on?’ There were cops everywhere and the place was sealed off. it was scary.”

Grimes said she doesn’t know what to do now. “I don’t know. It’s too cold to walk around. Maybe I’ll go shopping or something. Make the best of this extra day in New York.”



Danny Nguyen, 24, saw the smoke and heard the explosion. Nguyen was waiting for a bus back to Philadelphia from the Port Authority, and described the police response.

“The police ran down and told us to grab our bags close to us,” he said. “I saw a mom trying to take her daughter up the elevator the wrong way, just panicking.”

After seeing the smoke, he said, “that’s when everything connected and I realized this was serious.”

Barbara Petro had been due to return to Columbia, Maryland, on a 9.25am bus. “I came to spend the weekend here, to see the art museums and Christmas scenes in the city.”

Would this incident put her off doing that again? “No. It can happen in DC, it can happen in Chicago. I’m in a lot of big cities for work. I don’t want people to think that these things will put us off from the city.“