Nice: It was an overworked waiter, a busy restaurant, a scouts meeting and a last-minute flight delay that mourners gathered at the Promenade des Anglais in Nice were thanking on Friday.
As tourists and locals made their way to the promenade to add to the growing number of floral tributes, many recounted their own near misses as they absorbed the carnage some had seen and escaped not even 24 hours before.
Fifteen-year-old Ellisiv and her mother and sister were dining at a restaurant and watching the Bastille Day fireworks further up the promenade when 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel began his murderous two-kilometre drive down the seaside path that would kill 84 people and leave 200 injured.
"Luckily our food was an hour late ... it was taking some time ... we would have been exactly there," Ellisiv told Fairfax Media.
"People started running and we had seen some cops run but slowly so we weren't really that terrified, but then it became a lot of people and we started running as well," she said.
"I didn't really know [what was happening] ... I was really scared ... after a while people started running from the other direction as well and that was really scary because I felt like [I was in] a mousetrap," she said.
Twenty-one-year old Regina said she usually spends every Bastille Day at the promenade but this year gave it a miss because of a scouts camp she had organised with her friend Cecile.
"Almost every year I come here to celebrate," Regina said.
"This year I did not come because I am a scout and we organised a camp for young girls and we finished it today.
"When we see on the television Paris, Belgium, we think 'It's too far away' but now it's very close to home."
Nineteen-year old Cecile said the targeting of young children was particularly shocking.
"It's not the police, it's not soldiers, it's civilians and the children and that really shocked us because that could be my little sister," Cecile said.
"It's really the smallest people they targeted."
Cecile said she had decided to lay flowers as a mark of respect to those grieving and suffering injuries, while she lit candles "for hope".
Several mourners visibly wept as they gathered along the barriers, leaving teddy bears, a baby doll, written messages, posters and flowers.
One younger man stood alone at the edge of the barriers, overlooking the point where the truck's deadly rampage was finally halted, listening to music on his Beats headphones for more than an hour. At times he held his head in his hands and shook with grief but never spoke to those around him.
Others who joined the small throng were simply curious onlookers, including one American couple from Los Angeles who extended their stay in nearby Cannes because their flight to Nice had been delayed.
They had booked a room at a hotel just metres from where Bouhlel was shot dead and his truck brought to a halt. They had planned to watch the fireworks, possibly from either their balcony or the promenade.
Assan Toihri sells drinks from a stand every day. He recounted how he saw the truck, driven by the French-Tunisian attacker in a zigzag motion to harm as many people as he could, coming down the promenade towards him.
"It's difficult, difficult, difficult, catastrophic, catastrophic, catastrophic, horrible, horrible, horrible," Tohiri said.
"Last night, I'm not sleeping, never sleeping."
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