Tornado Hits Atlanta, My Hometown!

I began writing about the weather on another blog last night, here are my entries so far:

Posted: Fri Mar 14th, 2008 11:10 pm

Dude we just had what looks like a tornado in downtown ATL! The Georgia Dome and CNN center took some serious damage. The photo crews are few and over 10k are without power. There is a second cell coming in over the city now, and reports are few on damage. No major injuries yet! That was pretty serious, many large office buildings with glass out. And freeways are shut down in and out of downtown. There was an SEC game in the Dome at the time that was stopped because of the falling ceiling parts falling down, still no one has been reported injured.

Posted: Fri Mar 14th, 2008 11:30 pm

Shots are starting to come in on the news. Multiple buildings damaged, total damage on an entire side of the Omni Hotel next to the CNN center. 3 buildings downtown showing glass blown completely out of windows.Peachtree over walk that connects buildings across the major street of downtown Atlanta is partially destroyed. And now they are showing Olympic park and the streets are full of debris. We are about 20 miles east of ATL and the storm came over our area, but we did not get any wind. Heavy rain and some hail. This storm was pretty nasty. Posted: Sat Mar 15th, 2008 12:08 pm 2 words for you today Stunning and Unimaginable. That is how I would describe what we have seen today from the local news. I have a rental property that is un-occupied about 4 blocks from the Dome. We have not been able to get over to that area today, will probably make a trip tomorrow.My sister was having dinner in Cabbage Town her car was parked 2 blocks from the Cotton Mill building you have seen with the top floor crashed. She said that she was coming out of the restaurant and felt rain drops. So she and her date ran to the car, she did not want to get her hair wet They got in the car and the rain began to get heavy. As they went about 3 blocks to go under the railroad crossing they began to hear “rocks” against the car, not realizing that it was actually debris.The got to the railroad underpass, the car in front of them suddenly went in reverse and began backing up back under the bridge. She was puzzled and they were stopped under the underpass. Suddenly they saw the debris go by the exit of the bridge, now understanding that a tornado was passing by. She then proceeded home which is only another 3 block and of course the lights were out. She called me and my Mom and I was telling her about the things I was seeing on TV. She had no idea what was going on and she called me from her garage cause she was scared to get out the car. I assured her that the worst had passed and see went to bed without any electricity. It was not until today at 11:00 am that the electricity came back on and she was able to see the damage that she realized how close she was to the tornado! As a matter of fact, I too had no idea that the tornado left downtown and by her home. At the time last night, we really had no idea of the path or damage. So round two is like an hour away and it looks pretty bad again possibly for parts of the city. If nothing else, the holes in roofs are going to get wet and the quick patched roofs will be tested later today. The rain has really hampered the news coverage of the residential damages. My sister decided to go to my Moms house today and said she saw wide spread damage to buildings and houses all around the neighborhood. I am sure they will be activating some level of emergency disaster for parts of the city. There was NO Warning anywhere about the tornado before it hit, no alarms, no TV alerts, no sirens, this came out of nowhere and had that game not gone into overtime, there would have been some serious injuries and possible fatalities as people would have been in the streets and in the cars around the Dome. Phew, we dodged a bullet on that one. john See Part 2 with more pictures HERE

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