Nashville bar owner Joey DeGraw said the Nashville explosion ‘knocked us out of bed’.
AT&T said it made “significant progress” on Saturday night and early Sunday, while working to restore cellular and Internet communication services after a bomb in downtown Nashville caused significant infrastructure damage on Friday.
This meant that, for the third day, the aftermath of the explosion near an AT&T headquarters continued to impact customers and hamper emergency services. The company confirmed that the office has lost its commercial power connection and is working with the local energy utility to return online.
Nashville Fire Chief William Swann said sunday that AT&T expects to be at full capacity on Sunday night, although the company has not confirmed that yet.
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.
Counties like Christian County in Kentucky, which is about 70 miles from Nashville, were instructing residents to use alternative phone numbers for emergency calls. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee issued a similar statement.
AT&T said Sunday morning that 65% of the mobility sites affected by the explosion were restored.
OWNER OF THE NASHVILLE BAR: THE EXPLOSION ‘HIT HIM … OUT OF BED’
“We are bringing in additional resources to support the recovery of fixed-line voice and data services and we hope to have a fleet of 24 additional trailers of disaster recovery equipment in place by the end of the day,” said the telecommunications giant in an update. .
| Ticker | Safety | Last | change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| T | AT&T INC. | 28.69 | -0.06 | -0.21% |
The damaged building contained a telephone exchange with network equipment – but the company declined to say exactly how many people were affected.
Asked whether the AT&T building could be a possible target, Douglas Korneski, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s field office in Memphis, said on Saturday: “We are looking into all possible reasons that could be involved.”
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AT&T confirmed “significant damage to the building caused by the explosion, including the elevators, some beams / columns and the facade of the building”.
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Federal agents on Saturday searched the home of a potential person of interest in the Nashville suburb, and said they had received more than 500 tips related to the incident.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.