NASHVILLE, Tenn. -
Seconds after an explosion occurred at Gaylord Opryland Convention Center and Hotel, Metro 911 dispatchers immediately began receiving frantic calls from guests.
The first call came from a guest in the hotel around 8:15 p.m. who said, "It was an explosion or collapse. We don't know. Some people came running by and said it was an explosion."
The caller told the dispatcher he was making his way to safety and can be heard talking to a woman in the hallway who reported that a "bomb had exploded in the Delta Magnolia Ballroom."
Dispatcher: "Do you know if anyone's hurt?"
Caller: "Ma'am there has to be people hurt. I don't know."
Dispatcher: "Okay, okay."
Caller: "It was, it was bad."
A second hotel guest who was attending the National Sheriff's Convention, told a dispatcher he smelled something strange as he was leaving the hotel and told others in his group to meet at another nearby hotel.
Dispatcher: "You said you could smell something strange, what did it smell like?"
Caller: "It's definitely gunpowder, a gunpowder explosion."
Dispatcher: "Okay."
The third call came from a woman with Gaylord Opryland Security.
"I am calling because we have had some kind of a large explosion inside the hotel," she is heard telling a dispatcher.
She told the dispatcher she believed the explosion came from behind an escalator in the Delta, and added security members believed it was a "mechanical explosion."
Opryland Security: "No fire, at least that's what we can tell so far. No injuries at this time.
Dispatcher: "Okay, so it was nothing that someone set?"
Opryland Security: "not that we're… not that we know of. We haven't discovered anything yet."
A 911 spokesman told Nashville's News 2 the agency did not receive many calls from hotel guests and believes that is because fire and police were on the scene quickly.
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