Given what little we know, targeting the AT&T infrastructure could be a reasonable guest a motive.
The blast itself didn’t seem to take the hub offline; there was a broken water main followed by AT&T being refused access to the building by emergency response. It appears that things started cascading a few hours later, presumably once the generator fuel was exhausted.
Back when I worked in a CO the engineering goal was to be able to run the building load on gen for at least 24 hours straight before getting fuel trucks. We had weekly gen tests to validate things were working as expected.
It could be that they had to de-energizd some equipment to perform inspection and work within the facility. I know our facility had a number of procedures on how to de-energize parts of the building and inhibit the generators from feeding that area (a lesson learned in the Hinsdale CO fire years ago).
During Hurricane Katrina a number of us had to invent a procedure for de-energizing non critical equipment to reduce power load in order to keep critical services running for an extended period of time since it was clear we werent going to get utility and resupplies for awhile.
I used to work in 111 8th Ave (a big meet-me facility in New York City) and "National Security Agency" was on the building directory. Why risk killing civilians to wiretap Nashville? They can probably ask nicely ("nicely") and get whatever they want.
Most likely the generators were damaged from the blast & didn’t kick on when commercial power was cut off. The batteries then would have lasted 3-4 hrs.
> Given what little we know, targeting the AT&T infrastructure could be a reasonable guest a motive.
This is all I meant. Not meaning to spread conspiracies or misinformation. One article (have to find the source) stated that one of the main buildings hit was owned by AT&T and of course the HQ is there. Maybe it's related, maybe not. Just trying to make sense of the situation with limited information.
It would be strange to have a diesel generator that could power a building only for a few hours. I’ve commissioned numerous diesel generators to provide power to power plants if the transmission line is down and generally they can go at least three days. A diesel generator that could use all its fuel in 3 hours would be like a car with a 1 gallon tank.
The blast itself didn’t seem to take the hub offline; there was a broken water main followed by AT&T being refused access to the building by emergency response. It appears that things started cascading a few hours later, presumably once the generator fuel was exhausted.