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Downtown Nashville Sealed Off After "Intentional" Explosion. RV Broadcasted Warning That Bomb Would Explode in 15 Minutes. Possible Human Remains Found Near Explosion Site; Eyewitness Describes Hearing Gunshots, Audio Warning From RV That Exploded In Nashville; U.S. To Require Negative COVID Tests From U.K. Travelers. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired December 25, 2020 - 17:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[17:00:00]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Authorities have not identified a suspect or suspects yet or indicated a motive. We're waiting the next update from officials. We expect that in about an hour or so. But we now have a picture of the vehicle tied to the blast by authorities. Police responded to reports of gunfire at 5:30 a.m. local time in Nashville, when they came upon this RV that was playing a recorded warning that a bomb would explode in 15 minutes, then we're told at around 6:30 a.m. local time, it did. They say that is the RV that had the explosive device inside it, that picture they say was taken about 1:22 a.m. Here's some video.

Some far away just gives you a slight sense of the power of this given how far away that image was. Here's another camera that captured the moment of the blast.

We expect to be getting a lot more videos in over the next several hours and a lot more information. The timestamp shows the RV showed up on Second Avenue in Nashville as I mentioned at 1:22 a.m. central time. Police and the FBI are asking for help. If you've seen that vehicle, have any information about it, you can go online to fbi.gov/Nashville.

There are three people with minor injuries from the explosion that we know about. And more than a dozen buildings damaged along with many cars.

Evan Perez has the latest on the investigation. But first, we want to go to national correspondent, Natasha Chen who's live on the ground in Nashville. Natasha, what have you been seeing today? What's the latest on the investigation?

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, it is very obvious that police have sealed off a lot of the downtown core because it is extremely quiet. We are on Second Avenue where the explosion happens several blocks down from where we are. This is as close as police will let us get to the perimeter that they've set. You can see in the distance, there's this rusty Maroon colored, taller building, that's approximately where this happens, where you're seeing a lot of the debris in that area. CNN has talked to residents who have lived -- who live right by where that happened, and they actually described the damage and actually showed some footage of their own homes with, you know, broken glass et cetera. The American Red Cross has set up resources for people who may need that.

Now just in the last 20 minutes or so we also have seen a tweet from NIA, Nashville International Airport talking about the fact that some of their flight quarters have been restored, but some remain closed. And that is related to this explosion because of telecommunications issues. So that's really what a lot of people have been dealing with throughout the day with that being an AT&T transmission building. You know, a lot of AT&T service has been out as far as phone service Wi- Fi, a lot of people trying to work on restoring that, even 911 calls someone impacted. And so, law enforcement, emergency officials say that if you have non-emergency calls, please don't call 911. But leave that for true emergencies. And please keep trying, if that doesn't go through the first time.

COOPER: And Natasha have investigator said anything more about motive about what they believe? I mean, obviously, this is parked outside the AT&T building. There's other more local businesses on the other side of the street, not an area where there's going to be a lot of people at that time, but there's people who live in the buildings all around there, there are a lot of people who could have been hurt, had they not had some time to actually evacuate?

CHEN: Right. And that's what's so interesting about this, that the recorded message that you talked about, really gave people a warning to evacuate the area. And so, while there hasn't been a lot of discussion about the motivation here, just that it was intentional, according to police. You can kind of glean a little bit from what we do know, will justify that recorded message happening that gave people several minutes time to get out of their homes, to get out of the area, police even talked about a person who was walking his dog near that area and police actually waved him away at that point. So, saving a lot of lives and preventing what could have been a much greater tragedy, Anderson.

COOPER: Yeah. Though it also did bring police officers to the scene again, whether that was intentional, it's hard to glean exactly what was in the minds of whoever did this. Natasha Chen, I appreciate it.

For more investigation, let's go to Senior Justice Correspondent Evan Perez. Evan, what's the latest that you've heard?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, the resources are on their way to Nashville, the FBI Memphis Field Office is taking the lead on this investigation of what is obviously a vehicle bomb that went off and the devastating one at that because you can see from those pictures the amount of devastation that went not only on that block but there were windows blown out on a on blocks around the scene of that and as you pointed out the building that appears to be the most damaged is that AT&T exchange building and there's a lot of things that are puzzling to law enforcement right now. [17:05:20]

The ATF is sending in their national response team, these are some of the best bomb techs there are in the federal government. And what they are going to do is they're going to examine all of the evidence, both from the damaged buildings, the remains of this RV to see whether they can determine, you know, what this bomb was made from, whether it was set off remotely, whether it was -- whether someone was still in the vehicle when this went off. Obviously, there's so many strange things. The fact as you pointed out, that there was this report of gunfire, drawing the first responders there. And then of course, that broadcast message that was being sent from appears from becoming from the vehicle, it said, one -- at least one of the parts of the message said, if you can hear this message, evacuate now. And then shortly thereafter, is when that explosion happens. This is just the beginning of this investigation.

Clearly the FBI and the police that are doing this, there's still very few clues because there's -- they put out this image of the RV and they're trying to get people to call with any tips that they have about what might have happened here.

COOPER: Evan, is the timeline clear to you at this point? I talked to a reporter from the Tennessee and who said that a number of people had dialed 911 because they heard, what they thought were gunshots and again, we don't know if there actually were gunshots or if that was just part of the recording. And that apparently it was so early, it woke people up. But is it clear to you when those shots, when those calls came in for the shots and how long it was from then until the blast? I'm a little unclear on how long the recording was going for saying, please evacuate the area?

PEREZ: Right. It does appear, Anderson, from earlier in the -- one of the earlier press conferences that the police did in Nashville, they said that somewhere around 6 a.m. is when they started getting these calls again, because it's early morning, it's Christmas, it's an area of Nashville, it appears to be, you know, pretty industrial area, there are some loft buildings nearby. Maybe people didn't hear the initial sounds. And so that's why it took a little while for those for reports to come in. So no, there is still I think, a little bit of confusion as to exactly what that was, was it a recording or whether actual gunshots?

And look, the scene now is devastated. So, it's going to make it even more complicated for you to find any casings for instance, if there were any gunshots. So, I think that's one of the key parts of this, is to figure out whether that was part of the plan here, the motivation.

COOPER: There also seems to be, you know, whatever the countdown was, I think they said 15 minutes. And then apparently there was a delay, and some people actually started to come back. I'm unclear on how long that delay was. And, you know, again, what to make of that. Does that -- was that an attempt to get people into the area, back into the area or have people on the streets evacuating and need to go off I mean I guess still not know. PEREZ: Right. Or, you know, again, this is -- whoever put this together had some scale. But it may well be that they screwed up and they intended for it to go off earlier than it did. We don't know. And again, the possibility remains that someone was nearby and set it off. Again, those are things that the investigators are going to have to determine. But yes, I think that's one of the strange parts of this is if you were trying to give a warning to have people to stay away and to reduce the chance of there being fatalities, then the timing does seem a little odd.

COOPER: Yeah, Evan Perez, I appreciate it. Thank you.

I want to bring in Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Director at the FBI. Andrew at this point, what do you make of the information that we have?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, you know, it's a really interesting situation, Anderson, obviously could have been much more tragic with had there been large crowds around but there are several of these indicators that seem to point towards an effort to minimize casualties. That's very different than the terrorist bombings that we've seen in this country over the last couple decades. You know, if you think about the Boston Marathon bombing, obviously those two devices placed in the middle of tight crowds, Faisal Shahzad, effort to detonate a device in Time Square a few years ago, same thing looking for civilian casualties.

Here you have the exact opposite of a fairly desolate block parked next to a building that essentially has very few people ever in it even on a busy day, that's you know, five, six o'clock or on a detonation at 6:00, 6:30 on Christmas morning, very strange situation there.

[17:10:10]

I'd also -- it's interesting to me that there does though seem to be a high degree of planning here. So a device, at least transported in a vehicle possibly even constructed in a vehicle and accompanied by a recording, we believe at this point set to warn people before the device goes off. That's another really unique set of circumstances that we haven't seen before.

COOPER: It's also, I mean, given, as you said, the planning involved in this the location, there's a lot of different ways I guess it could be read the location could have been picked, because it's not likely to have high traffic at that time in the morning on a Christmas morning. Obviously, the significance of the AT&T building communications have been disrupted, you know, flights were -- there was the runways were shut down at the airport in Nashville for time. Unclear of that, you know, if location had something to -- was picked because of the businesses or a business on that street. I mean, there's obviously a lot we don't know, it is -- you said it's not like bombings, we've seen in the last couple of decades, it's the only, you know, I was reading up on bombings and in the early 70s, and I was too young to remember this at the time. But there were 1000s of bombings in the United States in the early 1970s, mostly by kind of radical left-wing groups. And a lot of them were aiming more at property than at people?

MCCABE: That's absolutely right. And that activity dates back all the way until like the 1940s, maybe even late 30s in this country with that sort of left-wing political activity. That's why I say we haven't seen it in several decades. But it's not completely unprecedented. And then of course, you have, you know, what really echoes for me in this situation is the bombings that they experienced in Ireland, kind of at the beginnings of the troubles right between the IRA and the British government is very common that the IRA, Irish Republican Army would plant an explosive device, sometimes in a place of great activity or traffic, but then call the local police first and tell them where the device was enabling law enforcement to clear the area. And then of course, they'd set it off. So it's not without precedent to have, you know, for folks to direct a device to go off in a place where there aren't likely to be human casualties.

COOPER: Just in terms of the investigation, obviously, having the you know, the possibility of bomb parts, vehicle parts, vehicle identification numbers on some of the vehicle parts, you know, CCTV images, which may have shots of who's driving or who's in the front seat of, you know, license plates, I mean there's certainly every indication is that this should be able to be tracked and tracked relatively quickly?

MCCABE: Anderson, I have, of course, great confidence in my former colleagues and I will tell you that they are going to find the person that put this RV on the street. You know, there's a lot to work with here. Second Avenue is a one-way street. So that vehicle traveled, at least from Commerce Street, three quarters of the way up the block in northbound direction and parked on the left side of the block. Even just in that short stretch, as I look at some of the photos online, you're passing a half a dozen surveillance camera. So, whoever the -- it's likely that they have pretty good video of somebody placing that vehicle and then getting out of it and walking away if in fact, that's what they did. And there's a lot of facts to work with here.

COOPER: Traditionally, how often do people or organizations or individuals claim responsibility for an attack?

MCCABE: You know, we think of that most recently in terms of actors who are affiliated with or at least motivated by, inspired by foreign terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. And I'm not suggesting that we know that they were involved here. We certainly don't know that yet. But in those occasions, and a lot of the bombings you see overseas, foreign terrorist organizations very quickly go to the internet, and take credit for those acts. But it's not -- it doesn't happen every single time. We still have notorious bombings here in this country that are unsolved to this day, right? You had the -- there was that somewhat, there was a bombing in New York in front of the military recruitment --

COOPER: There was a person on the bicycle.

MCCABE: That's right.

COOPER: And never been identified, right? MCCABE: Never been identified, so that's a really rare one. But again, it does happen. There are there are terrorist acts like this that are -- that sometimes folks don't claim responsibility for it.

[17:15:02]

COOPER: Yeah, fascinating Andrew McCabe, good to talk to you. I'm sorry in these circumstances. Thank you.

MCCABE: Thanks Anderson.

COOPER: Much more to come as our coverage of the explosion, Nashville continues next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back to the latest in the Christmas Day blast in Nashville. CNN has learned authorities have found what they believe to be human remains at the site. I want to bring in security correspondent Josh Campbell with the breaking news. So, Josh, what are you here?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Anderson, two law enforcement officials familiar with this ongoing investigation tell me that authorities have recovered what they believe are human remains near this blast site. Of course, the question that we've had, since this kicked off is, you know, where is the person that is responsible for this? Was that person in the vehicle? Did they flee?

Now, we don't yet know if these possible human remains belong to the suspect or potentially an innocent victim. That is something right now that authorities are trying to determine. The sources tell me that the remains have been sent to the medical examiner's office for analysis in order to try to identify, you know, what they're dealing with here. But we're also told that even though that investigation, that analysis is underway, that's not stopping them from continuing this larger effort to try to identify the person obviously many, many different avenues here. We're learning, you know, what we initially had reported as a blast that authority said did not cause any deaths. That was what a police were saying early on. We're now hearing that authorities have found what they believe to be human remains investigation underway to determine who the victim is in this case.

[17:20:00]

COOPER: Yeah, and we should always point out as, we always do it just early reports often, you know, in the fog of war so to speak, things become clearer as the hours take by. Is it clear HOW far from the RV these remains were found? And I don't want to get gruesome, but if any sense of how much there is of remains for the police to actually or for, you know, a forensic pathologist to actually examine?

CAMPBELL: Yeah, no, it's a good question. We're not hearing any indication about proximity. We're just being told that they were found in the vicinity of this blast site. So they believe that this was obviously associated with this incident. We're also told and, you know, the law enforcement officials being very cautious as we are as well, that they're not yet ruling out that this could be, these remains could belong to more than one person, they just don't know at this point. But that early putting eyes on the evidence that they found, they do believe that they belong to a human being or perhaps portal (ph), that is part of this analysis, of course, the medical examiners are conducting their testing back at their offices. But that still leaves the question about identification, just because you, as you mentioned, not to get too gruesome, but just because you have human remains doesn't necessarily mean that you can identify that to a person, which is why they're scouring that area looking for any identification, obviously trying to get to the bottom of who this vehicle belong to, in order to try to try to pinpoint zero in on the perpetrator.

COOPER: And we're looking at the blast side, I mean, obviously, the damage is extensive in quite a wide area. With a blast like this, assuming it was inside the RV. Is there -- do you have any sense based on your experience on sort of how easy or difficult it may be to get evidence from the actual device itself? I mean, how much of a device actually survives a blast like this?

CAMPBELL: Yeah, no, it's a good question. I've conducted bombing investigations in a previous life and law enforcement to include in urban areas. And the problem that we see here for investigators is that this closed off area where you're basically surrounded by buildings, that creates this blast wave that then has to travel in a funnel fashion, you know, down the street. And so you can have debris that's just spread, you know, blocks away, potentially as that bomb goes off.

I did talk to one federal law enforcement source who says that looking at just the initial just reflections of some of this damage that appears to be a very large device that was used. The problem is, is that you cannot determine sophistication simply by volume, it could be someone who created a fairly rudimentary device but had just the simple high volume of explosive material that was then detonated.

But, you know, these investigators from the ATF to the FBI, they're obviously very good at what they do. The FBI laboratory in Quantico, there's actually an entire team that does these bomb analysis investigations, they have collected signatures, they've collected, basically patterns of these types of devices, and they can pinpoint very quickly, what type of material we're talking about. And then, you know, one thing that they're also looking for, I can tell you my own investigations is sometimes the most key piece of evidence can be something that's small, that could be a centimeter or half a centimeter, that can then lead them, for example, to a timing device, or some type of other potential signature.

So, they have their work ahead of them, Anderson, and what we're told is, this isn't going to be days that we're talking about. This could be weeks that this crime scene is held, because they're going to have to go through methodically and look for every piece of evidence, as you know, I mean, I don't have to tell you having covered calamity around the world, sometimes, these investigations, they find a key piece of information that can lead investigators in a totally different direction than where they were. And so that's just what they're doing right now. We're in that initial phase where they're scouring gathering evidence, and then they'll have to process it afterwards.

COOPER: You talked about signature, and just to be clear for our viewers, you're talking about that many devices that have a signature, the person who makes them has a certain way of putting them together, that can be a distinctive signature?

CAMPBELL: Exactly. And not only based on the person, but also, you know, unfortunately, there are recipes online for how to do these kinds of things. And the FBI laboratory catalogues, all the different types of devices and different ways, the devices have been constructed, that could then help lead potentially to the person and also the type of material. I mean, it gets very specific, I think most people would be surprised that, for example, at the FBI laboratory, they have a list of stores that sell different types of alarm clocks and watches. And basically, everything that can go into creating a bomb is something that they are cataloging, which they will then try to narrow down geographically where material came from, again, the goal being to try to pinpoint the perpetrator. And, you know, as we've unfortunately seen in terrorism investigations, both at home and abroad, the FBI and ATF, they have a lot of a lot of experience doing this. But that's why we see this kind of uniform whole of government effort right now. They're trying to tap into all that expertise in order to try to identify this person.

[17:24:57]

COOPER: Yeah, Josh, I appreciate it. We're back in a moment with more, continuing coverage in the Nashville Christmas Day bombing including a resident who heard the warning from the RV and got away in time, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Gunfire and audio messages from a vehicle warning it would explode in 15 minutes, that's what one resident says she awoke to Christmas morning before she saw a massive explosion near her home. I want to get an eyewitness report from the scene. Betsy Williams joins me now.

Betsy, thanks so much for being with us. And I'm sorry we're talking to these circumstances. I understand you were woken up you say, by what sounded like gunfire. Explain what you heard and what time this was?

BETSY WILLIAMS (ph): It was sometime between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. I'm not exactly sure the first time we heard the gunshots. It was -- it sounded like an automatic weapon. It was very loud. And it woke me up. It woke us up. And, you know, we didn't do anything to start with because you just wake up after you've heard that, well then waited a few minutes and it happened again. And so we call 911 and --

COOPER: So the first time -- sorry, just to be clear, the first time you heard it, how many shots did you hear in a row?

WILLIAMS: I think it was it, you know, I didn't really count on, but it was about probably 8 to 12.

COOPER: OK.

WILLIAMS: You know, it was a, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, like that and it was very loud and so it happened again the second time.

COOPER: And then do you have a sense of how much time between --

WILLIAMS: And so it happened again the second time?

COOPER: How much time elapsed between the first burst and the second time you heard it?

WILLIAMS: You know, it seemed like it was probably longer than it actually was, you know. And so maybe it was five minutes.

COOPER: OK.

WILLIAMS: Maybe 10.

COOPER: OK.

WILLIAMS: And then it happened again, and then we call 911. Well, then, when it happened -- it happened the third time, and we called 911 back, again, just to make sure and there were responders who had already come down there after we call the first time. And we noticed, we looked out the window, and there was this white R.V. that was parked just across the street.

And so it started playing this message, evacuated now, this vehicle contains a bomb and it will explode. And it I think they may have been playing some other things. It was a mechanized woman's voice, it was computerized. And --

COOPER: So it didn't sound like a woman had recorded it herself. It sounded somehow computerized.

WILLIAMS: No. It sounded like it was a computerized thing, you know, how you have those automated calls --

COOPER: Sure.

WILLIAMS: -- and you have automated stuff. And that's what it sounded like. And that went on for a lot -- a good long while because by that time we were -- we called 911. Again, wanting to know, what should we do, you know, what should we do.

COOPER: And what did they tell you?

WILLIAMS: And they were trying to get information from the police who were down there to try and figure out what they needed to tell us. Well, in the meantime, we started gathering up our stuff, I had to get my cat, I had my 85-year-old sister who was staying in another apartment. We were on short term rentals on this floor, and we didn't have any guests. But my son was visiting up here and my sister visiting here, and they were in two different apartments and from the one that I've lived in for 15 years. And so then, then we -- then they start the countdown --

COOPER: Do you know -- sorry to interrupt you --

WILLIAMS: Evacuate now.

COOPER: Do you know what time the countdown started roughly?

WILLIAMS: So I think the countdown probably started sometime around 10:00 until 6:00 --

COOPER: OK.

WILLIAMS: -- or 5:00 until 6:00, something like that because we at 11:00 when there were still 11 minutes left, we got on the elevator and went downstairs. And by the time we got to our garage where our car was parked on First Avenue. The last thing we heard was there were eight minutes left to evacuate.

COOPER: So, the recording is counting down minute by minute?

WILLIAMS: Yes, it was counting down. It was saying you have 15 minutes to evacuate. And then, you know, and it would say that over and over. And then you have 14 minutes to evacuate.

COOPER: So, during that -- sorry to interrupt, but just be clear. So, when it would say you have 15 minutes to evacuate, it would say that over and over, over the course of a minute. And then then it would say you have 14 minutes and would say that over and over?

WILLIAMS: Yes, yes.

COOPER: Wow. That must be terrifying.

WILLIAMS: -- all the way down. I mean, I didn't hear it anymore after eight minutes, because we were in the car.

COOPER: I mean, that must be terrifying.

WILLIAMS: It was absolutely terrifying. And I mean, and, you know, when I told my family yesterday, I said, you know, I think I'm just going to spend all day Christmas in my pajamas. But, you know, I didn't mean that -- I didn't have anything else to put on because we walked out of there with our pajamas and our cat.

COOPER: This is not having spent the day in your pajamas, you were expecting more relaxing day.

WILLIAMS: Right, you know. And we had a ball, all of our Christmas stuff set up. And in fact, our Christmas tree and everything is in the apartment that overlooks the river. It's a larger apartment that overlooks the Cumberland River. And so, we went back around there after the explosion because we left, you know, what happened was that I'm sorry, I didn't finish this, you know, the countdown started. And we went and got in our car. And we left and went across the river to Nissan Stadium and parked there for several minutes.

And after we knew that the time had passed where the bomb was going to go off. I mean, the 15 minutes have passed, we went well. That must have just been somebody's sick idea of a joke. And we got back on Korean veterans Boulevard and turn down Second Avenue, heading north to come back down there. Because we were thinking, you know, we'll just go home. And of course, then the bomb exploded while we were on our way back down there.

And we saw that thing that fireball went all the way up past the AT&T, above the AT&T building. Everything just, I mean, everything shook. It was quite the blast. Well, I pulled up at Second Avenue and Broadway. And watch that will all these emergency vehicles, fire trucks, everything is coming down this way.

[17:35:11]

So, I turned right onto Broadway and then turn left, right onto First Avenue. And of course, First Avenue was completely littered with broken glass and metal pieces, window framing, wood, where that blast had blown out the backs of the building. And so, I drove up to our building. I drove far up to our building through all the glass and took a couple of pictures. And our Christmas tree was still own. And now, we could see the Christmas tree through the window --

COOPER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- where it was just still burning.

COOPER: And we've been showing some of your pictures. Let me just ask you just go back when the countdown, you said the countdown started around 5:55:55. By the time you were parked and waiting for the explosion, when the explosion actually happened, do you do you know what time that was? The reports we have were 6:32 a.m.

WILLIAMS: I think that the explosion was somewhere around like 6:28, 6:25 something. I don't know exactly what time that was because I didn't, I mean, you know, we're watching this explosion. So I did not check.

COOPER: Sure. Do you have a sense of how much time had elapsed from the time you thought there would be an explosion to the time there actually was an explosion?

WILLIAMS: Probably 10 minutes.

COOPER: So, the recording said --

WILLIAMS: Maybe 15.

COOPER: The recording said there's going to be an explosion in 15 minutes. You think there were an additional 15 minutes after that?

WILLIAMS: I do, somewhere around that 10, 12, or 15 minutes --

COOPER: Wow. WILLIAMS: -- something like that. And I mean clearly what they were doing whoever did this and I listened to a little bit of your interview with your previous couple of guests. They were warning, they were trying to warn people to get out, I mean, the gunshots because I'll tell you this, the message that was being played was played at a volume that I probably would not have heard it.

COOPER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: So, it was the gunshots that woke me up.

COOPER: Would it surprise -- is there --

WILLIAMS: And woke everybody else up.

COOPER: There's been some discussion about whether the gunshots were actual gunshots or whether they were part of the recording. Do you have any sense?

WILLIAMS: Right and I don't know.

COOPER: OK.

WILLIAMS: I know that it was really, really loud.

COOPER: Yes. That's --

WILLIAMS: The gunshots were very loud.

COOPER: Well, Betsy, I'm so glad that you and your family got out and they're doing OK. And I wish you the best.

WILLIAMS: Well, thank you.

COOPER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: And I, you know, and I have to say that it's really strange to go to bed on Christmas Eve and then, you know, get ready to go to bed on Christmas Day and I've talked to Anderson Cooper.

COOPER: Well, there's a lot of stranger things that have happened to you today than talking to me, but I understand the sentiment. Betsy it's --

WILLIAMS: Yes. I mean, I've lost my home.

COOPER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: I lost my business, all that kind of stuff. So, but hey, that's happened to Nashville. And I want to give a real shout out to the first responders. My gosh, you know, they're down there. That thing is talking. It's you know, who knows what's going to happen. I mean, and they don't run away. They run to danger.

COOPER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: And I am very, very grateful to them for that. Nashville's had a hell of a year.

COOPER: Yes. It's a --

WILLIAMS: -- between the tornadoes, the pandemic, you know, this, it's just been something.

COOPER: Well, it's a tough town and it'll -- it's going to bounce back. But this is just --

WILLIAMS: That's right, we got heart.

COOPER: Yes, no doubt. Betsy, I appreciate it. You take care of yourself.

WILLIAMS: Thank you.

COOPER: All right, Betsy Williams.

WILLIAMS: All right. OK.

[17:38:42]

COOPER: We'll be right back with more breaking news coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Explosion on Christmas Day in Nashville and the hunt goes on for who set it off. Nashville's Mayor John Cooper has now issued a curfew for the area surrounding the blast site just went into effect. We're joined by national security analyst, Juliette Kayyem, former homeland security official in the Obama administration and law enforcement analyst, Peter Licata, former lead bomb tech for the FBI in New York City. Juliette, your initial thoughts on this or what?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So, I'm just, you know, gathering what we're reporting and let me just put it in perspective for the viewers. So you have a really unique I think I would say pre-event incidents and I mean in other words the siren telling people to run away, the gunshots that we don't know if they were real gunshots or an audio and one has to assume that is they did not want a mass casualty event so compare that say to Times Square or the Boston Marathon that are chosen for mass casualty, your Christmas morning it's 6 o'clock and they want people to go away.

Then you have the incident itself, right, massive explosive. So, this is makes me happy in terms of investigations because it's hard to get that much material, there's going to be fingerprints, there's going to be an ability to investigate based on the explosives. And then now you have sort of the after part which we now have or we're confirming now, at least one casualty, so we have to determine who that is. Is it a victim? Is it a potential person involved with the incident?

And you have a damaged building, AT&T. I want people to be careful we do not know if AT&T was the target. If it was that goes to whether this was an attack on our critical infrastructure impacting what we already know airports there as well as the 911 system. Or was it, you know, was it just a consequence of a large explosion. And then finally, motive. We'll be careful, it's, you know, things look a certain way today that we think we know what it is.

COOPER: Yes.

KAYYEM: But we don't know what the motive is. So that's the totality of where the investigation is going before, during, and then I'm pretty confident though just given the footprint, they'll find out who it is relatively soon.

COOPER: Peter, just from your expertise on explosives, a device like this, what can you tell about it based on just the size, about what you have seen? And also, how difficult and are easy is it to figure out the details of exactly the explosive based on debris.

PETER LICATA, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: OK, good evening, Anderson, Merry Christmas. But this was a devastating blast. This was a large explosion. It's been referred to by a lot of the commentators all day, this was not a Chelsea 2016 type bombing in a pressure cooker, a Boston bombing type pressure cooker device, although there were many casualties in the Boston not to minimize what happened with the casualties that were involved in Boston.

[17:45:21]

COOPER: Right.

LICATA: But this was an extremely large device to do that type of damage, catastrophic damage. You could tell by the vehicles that are next to the seat or the origin of the explosion, the buildings across and adjacent to. It was a large explosion. So, the investigators will be able to make a very good assessment and judgment based on measuring the size of the crater and the collateral damage and the adjacent damage how much explosives were used.

And then as far as the type of explosive, the best way they're going to be able to do that is through chemistry. So, they're going to take, they're going to take explosive swabbing of the seat of the explosion, the debris surrounding the explosion, and they're going to send those back to the laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.

And very quickly, they're going to be able to determine what type of material was used to manufacture the explosives that were used in that device.

COOPER: And in terms of signature, how important will that be, trying to figure out the signature.

LICATA: It's going to be very important as far as the signature because let's put it this way, one of the other things investigators are going to do is they're going to use a lot of that CCTV footage and any eyewitnesses that actually potentially saw the blast even at from a distance. And one of the first things in my experience investigating these types of crime scenes in the United States and around the globe is you asked your eyewitness, you ask your witnesses and you look at CCTV A, what color was the smoke. If, in fact, it's a very dark smoke, which I don't think we've really seen yet, not the result of the fire but from the explosive itself, that initial color, you're going to talk about commercial type or military based explosives. So that's going to take you down a different path of who your potential subjects are with this.

If it's a lighter colored smoke like a gray smoke or a very white in color smoke, that's going to take you down a potential another path that says these could be improvised or homemade type explosives, then that's going to lead you to a potential subject and potential group to tie into signatures on who uses those type of explosives in the past and also help you and use in subsequent hours hopefully, that the FBI and Nashville police are going to execute search warrants on potential subjects.

COOPER: We've got a lot more to talk about. Juliette Kayyem, thank you, Peter Licata as well. We'll talk to you shortly. We're waiting a live update now from law enforcement shortly. Breaking coverage continues next.

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[17:51:39]

COOPER: We are standing by for an FBI news conference on the massive explosion this morning in Nashville. We'll go there live as soon as it starts. I want to bring that to you. We're also following the pandemic that's worsening as vaccines finally become available. More than a million people in the U.S. will receive the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in the past 10 days.

But hundreds of millions more will need to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity and ultimately stop the spread. Dr. Anthony Fauci estimates 70 to 85 percent of the population will need to be vaccinated before herd immunity can be reached. I want to bring in CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen. So, December has been the deadliest month since this started, do you think this upward trend is going to continue for the foreseeable future?

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Unfortunately, I do Anderson. We know that with every major holiday that we have seen a surge, we see a surge after Labor Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and our hospitals and ICU's are now filled with individuals who got infected around Thanksgiving. And we know with the millions of people who are traveling over Christmas and New Year's that people are going to be gathering indoors, despite our public health guidance otherwise.

But I want people to know that it's not too late, people may have already traveled but let's think about the idea of cumulative risk that just because you have engaged in one high risk event, doesn't mean that you need to engage in other high risk events. And so try to limit the amount of time that you're indoors with other people who are not in your extended family and try to stay outdoors at least six feet apart from others who are not in your household and wear masks.

COOPER: You know, in L.A. County, there's now one person dying of COVID every 10 minutes. You know, we heard in Tennessee, things being over hospitals, being at capacity in Dallas, you know, difficulty finding ICU beds. I mean, it's extraordinary that this is happening. At what point does the, you know, inoculations of the vaccine start to kind of mitigate some of the spread?

WEN: It's a great question. And I think we should see the vaccines as amazing hope for us that the vaccines are here. And now we have two vaccines that are safe and extremely efficacious, 94 to 95 percent efficacious.

The problem is that even though we've now have a million Pfizer vaccines that have gone out, that sounds like a lot, but we have a population of more than 300 million, it's going to take us many months. But most projections are that it will be until summer for us to vaccinate most Americans.

And so in that Meantime, what's going to save us is not the vaccine, what's going to save us are the masking, physical distancing, avoiding indoor gatherings, these measures that we've been talking about all along. And I just want to say with the holidays here, I know this is really difficult for a lot of people. This is the time that people want to get together with our loved ones. But we also want our loved ones to get through the holidays, because I'm sure none of us want to inadvertently be the host of a super spreader event.

COOPER: This new variant in the United Kingdom, it's also popped up in South Africa. Can you clarify what we know and don't know about these new strains? What exactly does this mean?

WEN: Sure, so the U.K. as well as the South African variant contains several mutations and the mutations are such that the virus will enter ourselves even more easily. And therefore, it seems that these virus or that this variant it makes people or is even more transmissible than COVID-19 normally is, which is a major concern because this is already a highly contagious virus.

[17:55:09]

Now what we know so far is that it doesn't appear to be more deadly. However, if you have a greater number of infections, by definition, you will also have more hospitalizations and you mentioned about our overwhelmed healthcare system. That's not good. And also, if you have more infections by definition, you're also going to have more deaths as well.

And so that's one I think the any kind of travel guidelines for testing ideally also implementing quarantine as well will be really important as we also increase our surveillance and testing right here in the U.S. too.

COOPER: All right, Dr. Wen, I appreciate it.

More to come, we're waiting a brand-new update from the FBI and other authorities in Nashville on the bombing in just moments. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COOPER: Good afternoon everyone. I'm Anderson Cooper. This is CNN Newsroom.

We are awaiting a news conference in Nashville on the Christmas Day explosion that remains a mystery with no suspects yet named or motive, but we may learn more soon. We'll bring you that new update from local authorities when it begins, we expect that press conference to start any moment.

[17:59:50]

We do have a picture of the R.V. that exploded around 6:30 a.m. local time in Nashville. That image is taken around 1:22 a.m., hours before the blast According Blair from it 15 minutes before the blast warning a bomb would explode.