After Williams called 911 and police cordoned off Second Avenue in downtown Nashville, a “computerized message” from a parked van caught his attention.
“Evacuate now,” Williams recalls the female voice repeating over and over.
It was a countdown.
“This vehicle will explode in 15 minutes,” the countdown said, according to Williams.
Then, “This vehicle will explode in 14 minutes.”
The countdown caused Williams and his family to heed the warning immediately and begin to descend from the floor from the third-floor floor.
“When the hour started, that’s when we said,‘ oh sh * t, ’” he said. “We have to get out of here.”
Dressed only in pajamas, they headed for their car – with their cat – and to the Cumberland River and to the Nissan Stadium. There, he says they had a clear view of the area and could see if an explosion would occur.
Thinking they were sitting there long enough and it was clearly a hoax, Williams said they were coming home. As they drove down Second Avenue before reaching the closed area, they saw the explosion in front of them, Williams said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “It shook everything.”
Another witness described the explosion as “at the end of time.”
“We believe this was an intentional act,” police spokesman Don Aaron said. “Significant damage has been done to the infrastructure on 2nd Avenue North.”
Buck McCoy said the windows of his residence in downtown Nashville, right in front of the explosion, were blown up and water began to spill from the roof.
“I have to have an angel because I survived that,” he told CNN. “It was pretty horrible.”
McCoy said he was awakened by what he believed were fired about 10 minutes before the blast. He got up and looked out the window, he said, but went back to bed when he saw nothing.
McCoy says he’s grateful he doesn’t get anything but scratches on his face, hands and feet.
“It was like a movie,” McCoy said. “It really seemed like the end of time to me.”
When he looked outside, trees were everywhere and broken glass poured down the street, he said.
“Everything on the street was fire,” he says. “There were three cars totally engulfed.”
McCoy watched as people came out of his apartment with their animals.
He tried to return to his apartment to look for his cat, but firefighters told him to get as far away from the area as possible.
Williams said after the explosion they could see the back of his building.
“It was loaded with glass and fragments and large pieces of wood and metal where everything had fallen,” he said.
Laughing at the irony, Williams recalls saying on Christmas Eve that he wanted to “spend the whole Christmas day in my pajamas.”