‘Evacuate now’ message, a countdown, and then a blast leave Nashville shaken – Times of India

First got here the warning, then got here the blast, shattering the Christmas morning silence within the coronary heart of Nashville’s vacationer district.
Nashville awoke on Saturday nonetheless surprised after an huge explosion ripped via the town’s downtown earlier than daybreak on Friday, mangling storefronts, injuring three folks and leaving the town trying to find solutions. Before the explosion, a weird message blared from the RV, warning that a bomb would detonate inside quarter-hour. Then it started a countdown interspersed with music, the police mentioned. Betsy Williams, a witness, mentioned she heard what she thought have been gunshots, and later seen the RV parked throughout the road from her residence. “It started playing this message,” she recalled. “‘Evacuate now. This vehicle has a bomb and will explode.’” The recording seemed like a mechanised lady’s voice. Police on the scene referred to as for a bomb squad, however it was too late because the RV exploded at 6.30am EST.
It is just not but clear who carried out the assault, however the police did launch a image of the RV, saying its driver drove the automobile to the curb in entrance of an AT&T transmission constructing on Second Avenue North at 1:22am EST. The police have been nonetheless attempting to determine whether or not anybody was contained in the RV when it exploded. They mentioned they discovered what could possibly be human stays within the blast space.
The penalties of the blast have been far-reaching. Shattered glass and bricks have been strewn about downtown. The blast additionally broken the AT&T constructing, inflicting widespread service outages that continued on Saturday. The Federal Aviation Administration quickly halted flights out of the Nashville International Airport as a result of of telecommunications points. The FBI subject workplace in Memphis is main the probe, and the mayor issued an emergency order till Sunday to maintain folks away from the blast website.