Investigators search home in Nashville bomb probe

Authorities have searched a house in the Nashville area as they probed the large blast that ripped through the downtown of the southern US city on Christmas morning, injuring several people and damaging dozens of buildings.

The operation in Antioch came as US media reports said a 63-year-old "person of interest" had been identified in connection with the explosion, which came from a parked motorhome that blared a warning minutes before it blew up.

Friday's blast in historic downtown Nashville, the United States' country music capital, damaged some 40 buildings and injured at least three people, with the streets largely abandoned at that hour.

No deaths have been confirmed but authorities were examining tissue found at the blast site that they believe could be human remains.

Police say the blast was an "intentional act" but the motive remained unclear and FBI behavioural analysts were involved in the investigation.

"The damage is shocking and it is a miracle that no residents were killed," Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said on Twitter on Saturday.

Media reports said neighbours had previously spotted a motorhome outside the residence that was being searched on Saturday by authorities, and that it appeared to be similar to the one that exploded in Nashville.

No one has been arrested, but "information developed during the course of the investigation led us to this address", an FBI spokesman said in an interview with the Nashville Tennessean newspaper outside the home being searched.

At a separate press conference, authorities declined to provide details or discuss the reports of a person identified.

They said they were sifting through more than 500 leads and tips and that sweeps of the area found no further explosive devices.

'Giant jigsaw puzzle'

Federal prosecutor Don Cochran said the scene was "like a giant jigsaw puzzle created by a bomb that throws pieces of evidence across multiple city blocks."

The investigation included some 250 FBI agents, analysts and other staff, said the agency's Doug Korneski.

"We have over 500 investigative leads and we're following up on every one of those," Korneski told reporters.

"So there are a number of individuals that we're looking at. So at this point, we're not prepared to identify any single individual."

He added however that "at this point we don't have any indication that we are looking for another subject."

READ MORE: Investigators find possible human remains near Nashville explosion

Emergency request 

The governor toured the site on Saturday and said he had asked President Donald Trump to declare a state of emergency, a technical move that triggers federal assistance in repairing damage.

"These buildings, many of which are historic, and others will need to be assessed by an engineer for structural integrity and safety," Lee said in his request.

According to a timeline provided by the authorities, police were called to the area to respond to gunfire at 5:30 am, and officers spotted the motorhome at 6:00 am.

Fifteen minutes later, they heard an audio countdown coming from the vehicle warning of a bomb, interspersed with music, and the need to evacuate.

Police have not said if anyone was inside the motorhome at the time, but lauded the officers who arrived at the scene and took quick action.

"Instead of taking it as just maybe a threat and calling in and getting resources, they immediately began knocking on doors, they coordinated the resources to get everyone evacuated and out," Nashville Police Chief John Drake said.

'Going to take some time'

“It’s just going to take us some time,” Douglas Korneski, the special agent in charge in charge of the FBI’s Memphis field office, said at a Saturday afternoon news conference. “Our investigative team is turning over every stone” to understand who did this and why.

Separately, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said in a report Saturday that tissue samples found at the scene were determined to be human remains. Officials said they were working vigorously to identify whom the remains belong to.

Beyond that, the only known casualties were three injured people.

The infrastructure damage, meanwhile, 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 hotline and a handful of hospital systems, remained out of service.

The building contained a telephone exchange, with network equipment in it — but the company has declined to say exactly how many people have been impacted.

Asked whether the AT&T building could have been a possible target, Korneski said, “We’re looking at every possible motive that could be involved."

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.

Mayor John Cooper has enforced a curfew in the downtown area until Sunday via executive order to limit public access to the area. More than 40 buildings were affected.

Disrupted telecommunications

AT&T said restoration efforts are facing several challenges, which include a fire that “reignited overnight and led to the evacuation of the building.” This has forced their teams to work with safety and structural engineers and drilling access holes into the building in order to reconnect power.

“Our teams continue to work around the clock on recovery efforts from yesterday morning’s explosion in Nashville,” the company said in a Saturday statement. “We have two portable cell sites operating in downtown Nashville with numerous additional portable sites being deployed in the Nashville area and in the region.”

Ray Neville, president of technology at T-Mobile, said on Twitter that service disruptions affected Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Birmingham and Atlanta.

“We continue to see service interruptions in these areas following yesterday’s explosion. Restoration efforts continue around the clock & we will keep you updated on progress,” he said in a tweet on Saturday.

The outages had even briefly grounded flights at the Nashville International Airport, but service was continuing normally as of Saturday. The Federal Aviation Association has since issued a temporary flight restriction around the airport, requiring pilots to follow strict procedures until December 30.

According to Metro Nashville Police Chief Drake, police officers responded on Friday to a report of shots fired when they encountered the RV blaring a recorded warning that a bomb would detonate in 15 minutes. Police evacuated nearby buildings and called in the bomb squad. The RV exploded shortly afterward.