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Dozens of agents from the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were surveying the ashy disaster area on Saturday. Inside the area, which was blocked off to traffic, parked cars and trees were blackened and an exploded water pipe that had been spraying overnight had covered trees in a layer of ice.
A total of 41 businesses were damaged, Mayor John Cooper said.
“All the windows came in from the living room into the bedroom. The front door became unhinged,” Buck McCoy, who lives on the block where the blast occurred, told local TV station WKRN. “I had blood coming from my face and on my side and on my legs and a little bit on my feet.”
McCoy told CNN that he and some neighbors were returning to the area on Saturday in search of pets they had been forced to leave behind.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said he toured the disaster zone on Saturday, saying in a Twitter message it was a “miracle” that no one was killed. In a letter to President Donald Trump, Lee requested a federal emergency declaration for his state to aid in relief efforts.
A RECORDING, THEN A BLAST
Adding to the cryptic nature of Friday’s incident was the eerie preamble described by witnesses – a crackle of gunfire followed an apparently computer-generated female voice from the RV reciting a minute-by-minute countdown to an impending bomb blast.
Police scrambled to evacuate nearby homes and buildings and called for a bomb squad, which was still en route to the scene when the RV blew up just outside an AT&T Inc office building where it had been parked.
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