From where the massive explosion went off this morning. We know the fbi taking the lead in this investigation as we learn possibly human remains may have been found at that explosion site. Reporter the heart of National Nearly deserted Christmas Morning when the explosion occurred. Black smoke and flames visible for miles, residents nearby captured cries of distress, windows blown out, buildings damaged. It was completely demolished, the front was like a war zone. Had to climb over things, there was broken glass, people in front of the building in shark. There was nothing left of my windows, they were blown completely into the other room. If i had been standing there 10 minutes later i never wouldve survived that. Reporter National Police call the explosion intentional. Officers had arrived around on. Also responded, encountered an rv that had a recording saying a potential bomb would detonate within 15 minutes. Officers upon hearing that decided to evacuate the buildings nearby. Shortly after that the rv excluded. Reporter one of the Police Officers was blown off his feet from the blast but no serious injuries were reported. The fbi posting this picture of the suspect vehicle, the downtown area has been sealed off, Police Searching for any secondary devices. Nearby buildings have suffered significant damage. Federal Law Enforcement is leading the investigation, no word yet on motive, suspect or arrests but officials believe there is no further imminent threat. Federal partners and state partners throwing every resource we can bring to bear to find out what happened today and bring those responsible for justice. This happen just outside the citys at t building but authorities give no indication the company was a target. The crime scene is in the hands of forensic investigators. Those who do this kind of work are extraordinarily competent. I have no doubt they will figure out where this came from, how it was detonated. Flights out of nashville airport were temporarily halted due to Telecommunications Issues associated with that explosion, those flights have been resumed. With good analysis from the experts, former secret service supervisory special agent in former dhs advisor charles marino, ted williams is a former homicide detective angela jones, retard United States during bomb technician. If i interrupted is because the fbi starting, otherwise i want to hear what youve got to say. What do you expect from the feds coming up shortly . Coming up in the press conference we have some development as he reported with the discovery of human remains in the vicinity of the vehicle so they will be doing a lot of work and giving some info on that although limited. The Investigation Continues rapidly with the fbi taking the lead and with the resources nationally of the joint Terrorism Task force i expect this to be wrapped up rather quickly and the investigation quite thorough. Is a former local detective who knows neighborhoods and communities what is the mission in terms of that local community tonight . The mission and local community from Law Enforcement is to call the community down and to ensure the community that they are in charge and meaning Law Enforcement and they know the direction in which they want to go. One of the things that also is concerning to me at this stage are copycats. Im deeply concerned about copycats around the country and have to believe Law Enforcement are all on alert. It will be interesting as to what we learn from this press conference. Maybe they will give us a great deal more than we are realizing and lets us know where they are in this investigation. It has been a rough year with covid19, very difficult times. Is it possible this was an elaborate suicide, you had a warning going out from the vehicle telling people to leave the area, your thoughts . Certainly possible. That is the problem. Right now just about anything you can reasonably put on the table. It is important to let the investigators do their job. It is our job to inform the public but not raise fears or anger. This was a destructive thing to happen in the middle of downtown. It is something that is pretty rare and Law Enforcement is a tremendous job searching out who does these things and bringing them to justice. I am going to celebrate that there were no innocent civilians killed in this. Those who were injured were not injured that much. And ultimately moving forward we always learn from these things and come up with new ways to protect ourselves. The military in afghanistan, the enemy takes the chances they have a heads up on it, we protect ourselves and our lives. You seem convinced we will hear a lot of news momentarily. Can you elaborate . Reporter confirming whether or not there was Human Remains Found within the crime scene, that would be an important piece of information to relay to the general public specifically in nashville and other investigative leads but nothing will be rushed. As far as material analysis, vehicle in formation, this vehicle was blown to smithereens, no idea where the Identification Number could be your the license plate or whatever new witness in formation has come forward. Theres a lot we dont know but i really expect this investigation will remain close. Mike your thoughts if they have a name or vehicle ownership, how much information can they develop over these hours . We have a little technical difficulties with 10. Thank you for your analysis. We will come back later. Nancy pelosi says the massive coronavirus aid and government funding bill is on its way to Donald Trumps desk but after House Republicans blocked democrats attempt to increase direct payment checks as the president demanded it is unclear if he will sign it to avert a Government Shutdown. Mark meredith is tracking the story of the response to the national explosion. Reporter donald trump and joe biden have been briefed on the situation in tennessee. The white house we are not expecting to hear from the president on camera today but the white house insists the president is actively monitoring what is going on in tennessee. From police and fire, you can take your questions, this time i will call on mayor john cooper. Thank you all for being here. The chief and i have just had a walking tour of the devastation on Second Avenue and as of right now it does, initial evidence does show the Early Morning explosion was a deliberate bomb being set off in our community and the blast caused injuries and catastrophic damage to this historic part of nashville. At the end of the day i think all of us have gone from relief that there were not more casualties, and amazing thing that there were not particularly when people begin to see the devastation on Second Avenue to relief that there were not more casualties and now anger and determination and resolve and a resolve to rebuild and not to be deterred and to bring whoever was responsible for this to justice. I have spoken with governor lee who is working with us to have a declaration of a Civil Emergency with the state and to work with fema to bring all possible resources to rebuild Second Avenue, to go forward not being deterred by this. Im grateful to state and federal partners to help this important part of nashville rebuild and come back. There are 41 separate businesses materially damaged by this blast. There will be others as we see the full extent of this but you can tell that it will need special help, special resources and i am grateful to the state partnering with us to commit to rebuilding and i will stand with our downtown residents and Business Owners for whom this was a terrible day but we have faced a challenge is particularly this year. We can rebuild and get back to normal. As announced earlier metro is establishing a curfew in the explosion impact area from 4 30 today until 4 30 p. M. This sunday. Affected businesses i would urge them to contact crystal at the central precinct 8628600 to be able to manage coming back to your facility safely but in the meantime the curfew area will provide safety and security for businesses in this area and it will be some time before Second Avenue is back to normal. You will not be 3 days, the curfew will go from jm robertson to broadway. The police will take special care for the next few days and partners at the fbi have a large crime scene to investigate and they need to do that effectively as well. This mornings attack was intended to create chaos and fear in this season of peace and hope but nashvilleians have proven the city of our city cannot be broken but we are not going to rest until those responsible for this outrageous and cowardly attack are brought to justice and the full force of metro police and partners at the fbi and acf are working together to make sure we will get back to being the safe city that we are. Three people have been hospitalized as a result of the explosion are in stable condition and my prayers are with them and their loved ones, able to visit with a numberyearold girl this morning who had no injury and was saved, but lets spend a moment in celebration of the six uniformed metro Police Officers from our central precinct who were at the scene at the time of the blast, these incredible heroes who ran to danger with uncertain outcomes and of them were responsible for so many injuries being saved. Ive spoken with chief drake and i can report the officers were injured by this are recovering well. I would like chief drake to come and spend a little time with Sergeant Miller who took swift action and directed people away from danger to save lives even when there own lives would have been in peril, they are heroes and im grateful to them and all of nashville First Responders. This is a year when we understand what First Responders mean to our Community Time and time again and on Christmas Day you have another example of that. Several downtown residents whose homes were destroyed by the blast, i am inspired by their resilience and we have to draw inspiration to be resilience once again and to get the resources to rebuild and i am grateful to the red cross and the Community Center for those who have been displaced. With that let me turn this over to the chief and answer questions. The message of today is we are going from relief to resolve. To catch those folks and rebuild our city and one more challenge in nashville 2020 but we will get through it and we are grateful to our First Responders and never you see once again these officers running into danger to help save lives, inspiring and the gratitude of our Community Goes to the chiefs force and with that i will turn it over to chief drake to comment on the heroism of our department. Thank you. Reporter as mayor coopers stated, this was just tremendous. This morning they received calls of shots fired, no idea what they were responding to. Once they arrived in the air radio they heard an rv giving out a message saying it was going to detonate within a certain timeframe and the countdown was going on and the countdown would start again. Officers immediately began knocking on doors and evacuated residents not knowing of the bomb would detonate immediately or go off at the time it was stated. These officers didnt care about themselves, didnt think about that. They cared about the citizens of nashville and they went in, we would be talking not about the debris but maybe potential people. That said, officers saved lives today and there heroism should be noted. Either the headquarters or data center might have been targets in the explosion. We dont know. The investigation is continuing, we dont know the motive but we are following up on all available leads. This happened Christmas Morning. Any reason to believe this day was chosen . We dont have anything at this time, why Christmas Morning we have no idea. A total surprise. When i was briefed this morning i thought it would be a propane explosion, it turned out to be an intentional act but we will follow up on every lead, we are following up on tips right now. Have you found human remains . We found tissue we believe could be remains, we will have that examined and let you know. I am sorry. I cant hear you. If you believe there was someone inside the rv. The rv was detonated, if there was someone inside we have no idea, such a large explosion, devastation continuing, matter all over the area so we will continue to examine that and see if there are human remains. Right now there is no known fatalities that we know of. You say you found human tissue. We believe could be but we have to examine it and once we know for sure we will let everyone know but we are investigating. Any information in the coming days, only you to believe this was something that was coming . Weve not received any threats whatsoever. Total surprise. When i got the call this morning i thought it was going to be a camper someone trying to keep warm, a ghastly candidate explosion. As i got more updates i found out it was intentional but we had no what do you make of the timing of this being there are no people on the street at 6 00 in the morning and it happened with the announcement playing in advance . I dont want to speculate, you would think this person didnt want to harm people, just wanted to destroy but we are not sure until we get further into the investigation. Tell us about the 9 one one impact . The 9 one one systems knocked out because of this, with the intention to knock out 9 one one service . We are not sure. We are following up on that. We had some services go down, we had at t go down for a little while but it is back up now. To say anything more would be speculation. I will ask that to be the last question. We ask ritchie from metro fire to give us an update. Change i know theres a lot of Unanswered Questions we cant answer right now but some of the things we do want to talk about, Public Safety and fire and police and office of Emergency Management. The things we do operate, incident stabilization, so currently right now weve done a sweep of all the buildings to try to make sure we are clear that there is no personnel in the building and weve done all the eric switching and all the things you would imagine if it was a dirty bomb or something of this nature. Now we have our search and rescue teams in so we can shore up the buildings, Structural Engineers to make sure again that the buildings are sound enough to be able to enter in and out. A lot of moving parts and i know theres a lot of questions that we are trying to answer that at this point so many moving parts. We just want to take our hats off to officers, responders and the job but has been done in the city especially right now with the infrastructure in a situation that is, the partners we have in local, federal, working together to make sure we are a resilient city and will keep moving. We are that is a great question and we are working on that because the way units are designed we are trying to get an accurate head counts. What i can tell everyone, the red cross is partnering with us and we have our buses set up throughout the city so there is anybody displaced we will take them to the east park Community Center and from there we will make sure they have a place to stay tonight or as long as needed. Are we talking hundreds . Many people. I wont put a number to it but there are people who are displaced. The integrity of the buildings downtown, is that why this occurred, anything collapses . Absolutely. The office of Emergency Management where we try to look at the overall view of the city and make sure everything is safe and working together. We know we had one Building Collapse due to the explosion in the age of the other buildings and we had water within displayed throughout the buildings and the cold weather we think the water making sure they have the water shut off but the integrity of those buildings are in question so we are trying to make sure we do have everybody in place and safety for all personnel. What building was it that collapsed . I dont have the address. Sorry. It was a building that the house, across from the explosion above is residential above so i cant really im sorry. That is our last question for this evening. I thank you for coming out. We will be in touch with you with regular updates. Live update from officials on the scene from the mayor, the police chief and fire chief, like to echo with the fire chief said about the bravery of these First Responders running to the scene at a time people are told to evacuate and run in the opposite direction. First responders always going there to protect and serve and save lives. Lets get analysis from the experts, former secret service supervisory special agent and dhs advisor charles marino, ted williams, former homicide detective in joey jones, United States marine corps bomb technician. Lets start with you. What caught my ear was tissue found, possibility of human remains, not clear if it was inside the rv or outside. What are your thoughts . Very dynamic and fluid investigation. We did get the acknowledgment that there was some type of remains which they think they have identified through tissue sampling within the crime scene so there is a lot more work that needs to be done. What we do know is the