Large explosion, buildings damaged in downtown Nashville

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Per wiki.

I screen capped the entire page in case it gets altered. (Notice on google maps it doesn't say AT&T but there's a BellSouth tag on the building)




IMPORTANT: Using Content From Other Websites on ATS
Posting work written by others


Oh crud! Thanks DTOM... do I delete?


Just add the link.
Or PM me


en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: LookingAtMars

It's a Central Office for the Telco. Notice there are no windows? Those things you see on the ground level which look like windows are only window boxes; they have brick and concrete right behind them. They're just made to look like windows which have been covered with signs. Look at the floors above...absolutely zero windows, like I said earlier.

This is where the main cross-connects happen for all of the local PSTN, 9-1-1 and long distance wireline calls take place. There are also main internet trunks which pass through these locations, and routing equipment for regional ISP's.

I will try to put this into perspective. Imagine a city like Nashville 80 years ago; they had just gotten telephone service. In order to connect one phone to another there had to be a point where the two lines touched each other. In the early days this was done with an operator and patch cords. As technology advanced the operator was replaced with electronics which connected the two lines automatically. BUT, the two lines still had to come into a single location to be cross-connected. This was a Central Office (or Central switching facility). So, basically all telephone lines in the area aggragated (or converged) on this one point, the CO.

Now, imagine a city like Nashville 50 years later. The city has grown exponentially, and there are now millions of residents, BUT all the phone lines still aggregate into the same point...so the facility needs to get bigger. BUT, the city has grown around the place or building where all these wires converge. Pretty soon they run out of space, so what do they do? Well, they thought of this. They build upwards, and the CO's get taller.

Now imagine the city of Nashville 80 years later. The city has grown exponentially larger still. Now the demand for the facility has grown so large that they have to build intermediate aggregation points and then trunk and multiplex signals back to the main CO, BUT the main CO still has to be there, so it continues to grow (upwards).

I'm tired, and I'm going to hit the rack, but I hope this gives people an idea of what a CO does. They are the central nervous system of the telephone companies. This is why they are built like the fortresses they are.

Information is power, and communications is information.

Hopefully this make sense now.

ETA - And just to contrast the point above; imagine if you tried to move all of that to another location. You'd have to take every single wireline connection, from every household, and reroute all of them to a new location. It's not just hard; it's impossible. This is why these facilities are so key. They have redundancy between each other, but there is no redundancy between the "edge" (i.e. households, etc) and the CO. And, the businesses which require "physical diversity" to get that redundancy pay dearly for it.

Done, link added DTOM😊

a reply to: Bigburgh

Yes this was the old location for bell south. However when they built the bat building they moved offices. ATT has the largest building in the state located downtown between 3rd and 4th. The bat building is about 2 blocks away from the blast. I think the damage occurred to underground lines between the two buildings would be my guess. Currently our 911 services are still out and they have been advertising a direct line to call instead. Internet was not effected as the main hubs were located in the bat building and to far from the blast.

Had this detonated near the bat building could have been far worse so im not convinced this person was after communication lines. 2nd ave is the heart of downtown its where people go when visiting nashville and i think its ikely that was the target.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

This is the Philly one, for instance....


inquirer.com/philly/columnists/inga_saffron/inga-saffron-fortress-ATT-architecture-South-Street-Bridge.html
www.inquirer.com...

I am quite familiar with it.

originally posted by: HalWesten

originally posted by: RMFX1
a reply to: NoCorruptionAllowed

No. It doesn't look like that at all. We have an RV, we have video of the warning to vacate the area before it exploded. It wasn't an air to ground missile what are you talking about?

And by the way, EVERY data center has an offsite backup in case of disaster, so blowing this place up would be pointless if it was for that reason. This is nonsense.

You're right about the "missile", that's just ridiculous. However this is a conspiracy site.

But pointless? Hardly, it knocked out communication in a very large portion of that area of the country.

and in Indiana. I tried to call my brother all morning and part of the afternoon on my cell phone (AT&T) to say Merry Christmas, and all I got was "beep beep beep...this call cannot be completed. Please try again later".

Find this article from June 22, 2020 and thought it was worth posting.

Tennessee newspaper investigating "horrific" ad claiming "Islam" would bomb Nashville

CBSnews.com

A major Tennessee newspaper said Sunday it is investigating what its editor called a "horrific" full-page advertisement from a religious group that predicts a terrorist attack in Nashville next month. The paid advertisement that appeared in Sunday's editions of The Tennessean addresses the "citizens of Nashville" and warns that the attack would happen on July 18, 2020.

The ad from the group Future For America claims Donald Trump "is the final president of the USA" and features a photo of Trump and Pope Francis. It begins by claiming that a nuclear device would be detonated in Nashville and that the attack would be carried out by unspecific interests of "Islam."

The group also ran a full-page ad in Wednesday's editions of the newspaper stating its intention to warn Nashville residents about next month's event "so that they may be able to make a decision intelligently."


In a story on its website Sunday afternoon, The Tennessean said the ad violated the newspaper's long-established standards banning hate speech.

Vice President and Editor Michael A. Anastasi said the paper's news and sales departments operate independently.

"Clearly there was a breakdown in the normal processes, which call for careful scrutiny of our advertising content," Anastasi said.

"The ad is horrific and is utterly indefensible in all circumstances. It is wrong, period, and should have never been published," he said. "It has hurt members of our community and our own employees and that saddens me beyond belief. It is inconsistent with everything The Tennessean as an institution stands and has stood for."


Sales executives ordered the ad to be removed from future editions, the newspaper said.

Gannett, which owns The Tennessean, is investigating to determine, according to Kevin Gentzel, the chief revenue officer.


Council on Islamic-American Relations spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said in a statement Sunday that while the group appreciates that the "Islamophobic" ad was pulled and an investigation has begun, "we would urge the Tennessean to also implement updated policies and staff training to ensure that this type of hate incident does not occur in the future. CAIR is willing to offer that training."

According to FBI statistics, Tennessee reported 170 hate crime incidents in 2018. Yasmine Taeb, a lawyer with Demand Progress tweeted that the ad "will only cause further hatred & incite violence against Muslims."

It was not immediately known how much Future for America paid for the ads. According to its website, the group's ministry warns of so-called end-of-the-world Bible prophecies whose fulfillment "is no longer future_for it is taking place before our eyes."

A telephone message left with Bonnerdale, Arkansas-based Future for America wasn't immediately returned.

Terry Heaton, who is an author and retired television news executive, including the former executive producer of "The 700 Club," said the advertisement's claim is not supported in the Bible.

"This idea has been debated in church circles forever, and there have been plenty of historical accounts of those who shouted that 'the end is near,'" Heaton said. "Obviously, nobody has been accurate, so I think it's safe to say this is nonsense."

Wasn't the building that the RV was parked in front of used as a server station?

You are correct. a reply to: Gryphon66

originally posted by: ChesterJohn
Wasn't the building that the RV was parked in front of used as a server station?

It looks like that and a switching station too. Servers that handle the call flow. Switches that connect to the internet. I would say this has Terrorist written all over it. But for the disgruntled business owners who are drowning in debt, there aren't many ideas on who would protect the people with a strong warning yet blow the place to bits next to the AT&T com tower?

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

This was a great post, and you seemingly answered my question of why the CO's are constructed the way they are. I had initially thought the best means of building an ultra-secure facility would be to build down rather than up. Now from your description of the city and regional growth patterns, I understand the choice of building 'up' vs 'down'.



I am curious about how the CO's might transition or change now that the exponential demand curve for wired phone has (I'm assuming?) flattened, but maybe that deserves its own thread.

this was meant to not hurt people but damage building structure. The ATT building may not have been the target. But with the time, and the warning before explosion, it doesn't seem like a terrorist thing. They wouldn't care about deaths, in fact, probably want some.

My gut says this was property related. large scale damage so something new can take place that otherwise would not have been approved. Or not.

originally posted by: StratosFear
I`m about 2 miles away from this and just getting the details.

Look at the large red building on google maps street view, in the middle of a touristy area full of restaurants and shops with this large building with no public access. Theres a large hole in the side of it with grate and chunks of the sidewalk blown upwards. An RV parked on the street is not going to blow the building outwards. Its 2020 and coincidences do not exist anymore.

Large red building with no public access? So... the AT&T building then?

Ruh-roh...

originally posted by: CharlesT
a reply to: Vasa Croe

No it wasn't. It wasn't intended for either one you suggest. It was meant to send a message...
It was timed especially to avoid any casualties.

This, combined withe the post immediately above yours about a large hole blow outward in the AT&T building (assuming I was right about that), and finally combined with the fact that there was actually a recorded warning being broadcast from the RV itself, suggests this was a white hat intrusion - except, why was the hole in the building blown outward? Wouldn't white hats be wanting to get inside?

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn
a reply to: CharlesT

It is being rumored that some folk are really upset about the pardons that Trump has given, especially the Blackwater pardons.

Any mention of who said 'some folk' would be?

a reply to: LookingAtMars

That mayor was a goof trying to joke about it. I'll be interested to see who the bomber turns out to be and who put him up to it.
The suggestion that this was done to enable something else to be done or to cover up something that was being done is intriguing. Maybe replace existing hardware and equipment with new equipment with more clandestine tracking and eavesdropping ability.

a reply to: Dutchowl

George Blake died?

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

I am curious about how the CO's might transition or change now that the exponential demand curve for wired phone has (I'm assuming?) flattened, but maybe that deserves its own thread.

Excellent observation. Without going into a lot of detail, which would go way off-topic on this thread. In short, yes, demand for terrestrial (copper) wireline services has flattened significantly over the past couple decades. However, demand for other terrestrial based infrastructure like fiber optics has increased like 10,000-fold. So the medium is different, but the challenges remain the same. Whereas regulated Telcos used to be heavily involved in voice traffic, now they are much more heavily involved in hauling data instead (ironically, this 'data' also includes voice traffic in the form of VOIP as well). So Telco CO's remain as critical as they have been historically.

Remember, ISP's (which abound now days) need a way to connect to their customers, and they also need trunk pathways to the Internet. The regulated Telcos provide this connectivity. Cellular is ineffective for this because it won't handle the bandwidth which is mammoth, and satellite is too slow (although it is used in many locations), and it always will be, simply because of the physics involved. This leaves terrestrial based connectivity infrastructure and services. The reason much (but not all) of it goes through the Telcos is simply because they own the Right of Ways via the regulating authority, the Public Utility Commission, hence the term "regulated Telco". For private carriers to secure their own ROW's and then build out the infrastructure would cost them trillions upon trillions (just a mind boggling amount).

But there are some companies who own and lease out some of their own private infrastructure. SPRINT (now T-mobile) is/was a good example, and the key was contained in their name..."SPRINT", or Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony. SPRINT started laying fiber optic cables next to their railroad tracks where they already had the ROW's. Other companies since have done similar through sheer brute force and money. Many of these own the trans-oceanic cable infrastructure across the oceans. But, I digress.

Bottom line; yes, the telecommunications landscape is changing dramatically on an almost daily basis. BUT, there still needs to be single intersection points where point "A" can be cross-connected with point "Z". So the telcos aren't going anywhere soon.

a reply to: Prime80

This is where the early speculation about some kind of religious extremist group came from. It doesn't even have to be Muslim although there are certainly plenty of Muslim groups in Nashville, but Nashville hosts a LOT of religious groups, everything from a lot of mainline Christian denominations to real whackos like the Black Hebrew Israelites and everything in between.

It could have really been anything if you're looking religious nutjob although I'd rule out most mainline groups as they're likely to be pretty stable.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk
Who decides the fiber optic infrastructure layout and who decides who gets it and who doesn’t?

I’ve seen houses in the middle of nowhere with fiber optic internet, but the town I live has ZERO infrastructure even though the fiber optic runs right down the railroad.

I talked with several companies and they say it’s not cost effective....WTF but it is to run fiber optics miles out of the way for one house? (Multiple rural houses for example)