Local and federal authorities are investigating the explosion of a recreational vehicle that will broadcast a warning to residents before flying into the city’s Nashville as early as Friday.
The blast, which police called an “intentional act,” was dispersed in the city’s commercial district’s quiet Christmas City at 6:30 p.m.
Tissue was found in the wake of the blast, according to Metropolitan Nashville Police John Drake, and officials are investigating to confirm whether it could be human remains. He added that there were no other casualties in the blast, and officials had not been warned in advance in the days before the blast was imminent.
Three people sustained non-serious injuries, bricks were tossed away from buildings, trees were knocked to the ground, and battlefields erupted in the streets.
Damage to the AT&T building next to the RV has temporarily disrupted flights at 911 emergency services and the non-rupted Shavil International Airport.
Police said officers arrived at the scene before the blast and found an RV parked in front of the AT&T building in response to reports of a shooting at around 30.30am. A speaker system on the RV was transmitting a warning about an imminent explosion and telling people to evacuate by what sounded like a recorded female voice.
Metropolitan Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron said they heard the announcements coming from the vehicle, took it seriously and were working to seal the streets to save the victims. “We think those officers did the same thing and saved lives.”
The blast was so powerful that it knocked an officer to the ground, telling police to bring in advisers.
“They went through a very traumatic experience,” Aaron said.
Officials said they had no idea of the purpose of the pre-dawn bombing in a large desert area after warning people to stay away. The blast disrupted AT&T service around Nashville as part of the immediate vicinity of the building, company spokesman Jim Greer said in an emailed statement.
“We are in contact with law enforcement and will work as quickly and safely as possible to restore the service,” Greer said.
Local news stations reported that 911 service was out in the surrounding communities. On Friday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration, citing telecommunications issues related to the explosion, temporarily grounded flights to Nashville International Airport.
Smoke and fire could be seen for hours after the blast, across the Cumberland River, half a mile from the state capital from the Tennessee Titans’ Nissan Stadium.
Officials said three people have been taken to local hospitals with non-serious injuries.
Officials said they were not sure if anyone was inside the RV when it flew. Police dogs were sniffing for other explosives in the area, though officials said they did not believe other bombs had been planted there.
“There are a lot of moving parts,” said Fire Chief William Swann.
Assistant Special Agent Matt Foster, who is in charge of the FBI, the leading investigative agency, said authorities were calling it a “mass crime scene” and were not sure who was behind the blast.
He urged local residents to reach out to the FBI with the information.
“Please let us know what you know,” he said. “We need your lead. We need your help.”
City Councilman Freddie O’Connell, who represents the area, tweeted that dozens of his members had lost homes in the cold holiday morning in anticipation of snow.
O’Connell tweeted, “We’ll work together to rebuild this together.”
One of the residents is Betsy Williams, 64, who runs a vacation rental business in the building owned by her family from where the RV originated.
She was awakened by the sound of gunfire at 4:30 or 5 a.m. when she was sleeping in her third-floor apartment apartment on 2nd Avenue North, she said.
“It sounded like it was from an automatic weapon because it’s a fast fire.” He added that he heard several loud explosions of gunfire, prompting him to call 911.
Williams’ son, who was visiting Georgia for the holidays and staying in a vacation unit, saw an RV parked around the road and thought it looked suspicious, she said. He then heard the sound of a vehicle warning that it was about to explode.
“It was, ‘Empty now. This vehicle has a bomb. This vehicle will explode,'” he said.
When the message turned into a countdown, warning that the vehicle would explode in 15 minutes, then in 14 minutes, he picked up his 85-year-old sister, who lives in Rizona and went on vacation, staying in another apartment. He and his family went to the elevator at the time he put his cat, Mavis, in a carrier and the message was an 11-minute warning.
They ran to his car, which was an obstacle in the distance and crossed the river to see from a distance. When nothing happened after 15 or 20 minutes, they started returning home, he said. Only when they saw the explosion.
“The fireball went over the AT&T building,” he said. “It was a vague explosion. It was just a big old boom and it blew up in front of those buildings and fell into a ditch in the street.”
Williams and his family were now staying in a hotel with the clothes they were wearing when they emptied, while police could not change clothes as the downtown area was closed.
“I said I want to spend Christmas day in my pajamas all day, but I don’t really mean that,” she joked.
She is not sure when she will be able to return home, or if anything will be left.
“It’s terrible,” he said. “All my stuff. All our Christmas gifts. We put all our things away, were ready to take Christmas stockings and snacks and open our gifts and spend the whole day in a really nice, relaxed Christmas, a little champagne, and now We’re not doing any of that. “
Still, she said, it was thanks to her that whoever planted the bomb was issuing a migration warning, enabling her family to save their lives.
“Thank God for that,” he said.
Williams’ partner, Kim Medlom, said they first called at 9:30 a.m. after hearing what sounded like gunfire. About half an hour later, Medlom began listening to an audio dio warning him of the bomb.
“We descended into our basement area and walked out the back door on First Avenue because we were afraid to go to Second Avenue,” Medlom said. “Because we were also worried that we heard gunshots, which, you know, we would be, someone might try to lure us.”
Madlom believes anyone who blew up the bomb would have given residents a “grace period” if they did not leave before the 15-minute warning expired.
“I want to say in the back, we talked about it, we think that shooting was also a recording. Not an actual shooting,” Medlom said. “I mean, we think it was a recording because the sound was there. The third time we heard it was right.”
Photos posted on social media by the city’s fire department show broken windows, damaged trees and extensive property damage north of 2nd Avenue in Nashville. Local TV stations showed footage of the walls of the buildings.
Nashville Mayor John Cooper said the blast destroyed the water mains, adding to the “drama” at the scene. He estimated that at least 41 different businesses had suffered.
“I want to stand with our downtown residents and our business owners, for whom this has been a terrible day,” Cooper said Friday evening. “Nashville faces other challenges, especially this year – we can rebuild and get back to normal.”
The mayor noted that the damage would have been much worse on a weekday. The normally busy downtown street was fairly sleepy in the early hours of Christmas, Cooper said.
“It would have been a different message if it had been five o’clock on Friday evening,” he told reporters at the scene.
Cooper issued a state of emergency on Friday, which imposed a curfew in the area until 4:30 p.m. The mayor also said he is working with Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to coordinate state and federal resources for the city, as the explosion continues for locals after the explosion.
“I think today’s message is we’re out of relief, now he’s determined to capture the devotees and rebuild our city,” Cooper said. “And Nashville has one more challenge in 2020 but we’ll get through it.”
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A local newspaper reported that the blast could be heard and felt miles away.
Tom Cyrillo, 37, said the deaf blast rocked his condo two and a half miles away.
“It sounded very, very loud, and for three or four seconds it shook like the foundation of a building,” said Cyrillo, who teaches at a private school in Nashville.
The blast was “surreal,” he said in an interview. “You hear about these things in other countries or other places, but in Nashville, Tennessee in 2020, it seems unlikely that a car bomb will explode from where you live.”
Nashville, he noted, “is a big city but it’s not New York or Los Angeles or DC.”
The area around the blast is primarily home to offices, restaurants and stores but locals live in apartments and condos that have been renovated in recent years on the upper floors of buildings on the charming stretch of downtown, popular with tourists.
The city’s bomb squad was at the scene after the blast, along with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations tweeted that agents and dogs have been trained to find the accelerator at the scene to help with the investigation, led by the FBI.
A White House spokesman said President Donald Trump was briefed on the blast shortly and would receive regular updates. U.S. A Justice Department spokesman said Acting Attorney General Jeff Rose provided all department resources to assist in the investigation.
