Officers give harrowing account of RV bombing
Nashville NASHVILLE, TENN. — police urged nearby residents to get away as an ominous recording blared from a recreational vehicle. Suddenly thewarning stopped, and Petula Clark’s 1964 hit “Downtown” started playing. Then thebombwent off.
Police officers provided harrowing details Sunday of responding to the Christmas morning explosion in downtown Nashville, at times getting choked up reliving the moments that led up to the blast and offering gratitude that they were still alive.
“This is going to tie us together forever, for the rest of my life,” Officer James Wells, who suffered some hearing lossduetothe explosion, told reporters at anews conference. “Christmas will never be the same.”
The five responding officers gave their accounts of what happened Friday.
“I just see orange and then I hear a loud boom. As I’m stumbling around, I just tell myself to stay onmy feet and to stay alive,” Wells said, at times tearing up.
Officer Amanda Topping said she initially parked their police car beside the RV while responding to the call before moving it once they heardthe recording. Topping said she called her wife to let her know that “things were just really strange” as she helped guide people away from the RV.
That’swhen she heard the RV recording switch from a warning to playing Clark’s hit, “Downtown.” Moments later the explosion struck.
“I felt the waves of heat but I kind of just lost it and started sprinting toward (Wells),” Topping said. “I’ve never grabbed someone so hard in my life.”
Officer Brenna Hosey said she and her colleagues knocked on six or seven doors in nearby apartments to warn people to evacuate. She particularly remembered a startled mother of four children.
“I don’t have kids but I have cousins and nieces, people who I love who are small,” Hosey said, adding she had to plead with the family to leave the building as quickly as possible.
The attack, which damaged an AT&T building, has continued to wreak havoc on cellphone service and police and hospital communications in several Southern states as the company worked to restore service.
Forensic analysts were also reviewing evidence collected from the blast site to try to identify the components of the explosives as well as information fromthe U.S. Bomb Data Center for
intelligence and investigative leads, the official said.
He said federal agents were examining a number of potential leads and pursuing several theories, including the possibility that the AT&T buildingwas targeted. The bomb caused damage that affected communications in several states.
Investigators shut down the heart of downtown Nashville’ s tourist scene—an area packed with honky-tonks, restaurants and shops — as they shuffled through broken glass and damaged buildings to learn more about the explosion.
Investigators also said they were working to identify human remains found at the scene. Beyond that, the only known casualtieswere three injured people.
The infrastructure damage was broadly felt, due to an AT&T central office being affected by the blast. Police emergency systems in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama, as well as Nashville’s COVID-19 community hot line and a handful of hospital systems were impacted.
The building contained a telephone exchange, with network equipment in it — but the company has declined to say exactly how many peoplewere affected.
AT&T said Sunday it was rerouting service to other facilities as the company worked to restore its heavily damaged building. Thecompany said in a statement that itwas bringing in resources tohelp recover affectedvoice and data services and expects to have 24 additional trailers of disaster recovery equipment at the site by the end of the day.
Restoration efforts faced several challenges, which included a fire that forced their teams to work with safety and structural engineers and drilling access holes into the building in order to reconnect power.
The Federal Aviation Administration has since issued a temporary flight restriction around the airport, requiring pilots to follow strict procedures until Dec. 30.