Fallout from Nashville explosion impacts local businesses

BOWLING GREEN, Ky.- Fallout from the Nashville explosion is reaching Bowling Green and impacting local businesses like EZ Liquors. 

“For a little business like us, it’s definitely been a rough few days,” said manager Dylan Mills.

The bombing affected cell service for AT&T for hundreds of miles surrounding Nashville for days.

Cell service wasn’t the only outcome. Multiple local businesses had their systems shut down and were unable to take debit or credit cards. 

“We had to add up every service with a calculator and it tells ya. We had to go in there and add 6% and add it back to the total. We couldn’t even find a cash register for sale anywhere. I drove around for hours just trying to find a cash register. So at least there was something so we didn’t have to add it up by hand,” said Wills. 

Mills says it’s something they never thought they would have to prepare for. 

“On top of it already being a rough year that didn’t help any. Like I get that it affected Walmart and all that too but there’s a big difference between us and Walmart. Walmart can make it work. It took everything we had to figure out something so we didn’t have to lock up doors for the weekend. On the busiest or second busiest weekend of the year,” said Wills. 

The cell service difficulties made it a dire situation for people with emergencies, people had delays while trying to call 911 and other hospital numbers. 

“It’s always an issue, you wanna be available, we wanna make sure we’re always available to the community and that they can reach us whenever they need us. So if there’s a delay in getting to us, obviously if there’s an emergency we would direct them to call 911. I think they were able to overcome it with alternate numbers like we did with our EMS,” said Director of Corporate Security and Emergency Management Coordinator Gary Sullivan.

Med Center Health said there shouldn’t currently be any delays and they are working to get their system back to normal. 

AT&T provided a statement saying, Our mobility network is now operating normally, nearly all home internet and video customers have been restored and our business customers are back online… Recovery work will continue today as we address the few remaining services and customers that still may be impacted by this event.”