After Williams called 911 and the police isolated Second Avenue in downtown Nashville, a “computerized message” from a parked trailer caught his eye.
“Evacuate now,” Williams recalls the female voice saying – over and over again.
It was a countdown.
“This vehicle will explode in 15 minutes,” said the countdown, according to Williams.
Then, “This vehicle will explode in 14 minutes.”
The countdown caused Williams and his family to pay immediate attention to the warning and start down the stairs to their third-floor apartment.
“When time started, that’s when we thought, ‘oh sh * t’,” she said. “We need to get out of here.”
Dressed only in their pajamas, they went to the car – with their cat – and crossed the Cumberland River and the Nissan Stadium. There, she says they had a clear view of the area and could see if an explosion would occur.
Thinking that they sat there long enough and that it was clearly a scam, Williams said they went home. As they drove down Second Avenue before reaching the secluded area, they saw the explosion in front of them, Williams said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “It rocked everything.”
Another witness described the explosion as “at the end of time”.
“We believe this was an intentional act,” said police spokesman Don Aaron. “Significant damage has been done to the infrastructure of 2nd Avenue North.”
Buck McCoy said the windows of his downtown Nashville residence, right in front of the explosion, exploded and water started pouring from the ceiling.
“I must have an angel because I survived that,” he told CNN. “It was horrible.”
McCoy said he was woken up by what he thought were shots about 10 minutes before the explosion. He got up and looked out the window, said, but went back to bed when he saw nothing.
McCoy says he is grateful that he has done nothing but scratches on his face, hands and feet.
“It was like a movie,” said McCoy. “It really felt like the end of time.”
When he looked outside, trees had fallen everywhere and broken glass strewn across the street, he said.
“Everything on the street was on fire,” he says. “Three cars were totally engulfed.”
McCoy saw people leaving their apartments with their animals.
He tried to return to the apartment to look for his cat, but firefighters told him to stay as far away from the area as possible.
Williams said that after the explosion they were able to see the back of the building.
“It was full of glass, shards and large pieces of wood and metal where everything had fallen,” she said.
Laughing at the irony, Williams remembers saying on Christmas Eve that he wanted to “spend Christmas all day in pajamas”.