A Busy Night For My Little Brother

My youngest brother, Carl, is probably a pretty busy guy tonight. Carl is the Executive Director of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, which this week is the site of the Southeastern Conference Basketball Tournament. The Dome hosts the SEC each year, and we Kentuckians have come to refer to that great Georgia city as "Cat-Lanta" due to the Wildcats very successful record in that building over the past several years. When the SEC Tourney or the Final Four, or the Super Bowl, or other big events are at the Dome, Carl usually takes a room downtown due to the extreme time he has to spend at the events and the long commute he has to his home at Roswell in Cobb County. Carl would have been busy anyway, with the big tournament, without the extra excitement of a probable tornado that hit downtown Atlanta during overtime of the Alabama - Mississippi State game.

I had just returned from taking two of the grandsons to see Dr. Seuss' "Horton Hears A Who", when the phone rang. It was Dad asking if I had been watching the game. "No", I replied, but I explained that I did plan on watching the Kentucky - Georgia game. "You'd better turn it on now", he said, "They've had tornado damage to the roof!" I'm sure many of you have seen news footage of the scary event. The roof on the Georgia Dome is similar to that of Indianapolis' RCA Dome, but very different to that of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The Georgia Dome has a "fabric" roof over a steel skeletal structure. The live television coverage showed the fabric rippling like a big curtain, scaffolding and catwalks swinging wildly from side to side, and debris falling on the court and in the stands. Fans were scurrying for the exits while the roar of the wind filled the building. Scary stuff.

Naturally play was stopped with just over two minutes to play in Overtime. The break lasted for an hour and three minutes before play resumed. You have to feel for the players who had played a torrid 42 minutes of basketball and then had to cool their heels for 63 minutes. The Bulldogs of Mississippi State won the game by two points as a Crimson Tide three pointer rattled the iron and came out as time expired. It certainly was one of the more unusual basketball games in the history of the sport, but that was not of the greatest import. The damage done in Downtown Atlanta and the resulting personal injuries are the big story.

CNN reported that there was severe damage done to the adjacent Georgia World Congress Center, the Omni Hotel, and the CNN Center. Broken glass was strewn in the food court of the CNN Center and in the sidewalks and streets, and debris was everywhere. The World Congress Center is flooded with a broken water main. It isn't often that a tornado hits a major city's downtown area. One hit downtown Nashville a few years ago and did a tremendous amount of damage to the LifeWay building (the publishing entity of the Southern Baptist Convention).

It's 11:30 now, and SEC officials have announced that the Kentucky - Georgia game will be postponed. No announcement as to when the game will be played tomorrow, and how the schedule will work out in time to crown a conference champion in time for the NCAA tournament selection on Sunday evening - but that's actually a minor point considering the property damage and the potential for loss of life. I'm sure the 30,000 + fans are disappointed that the Cats and Dogs will have to wait till tomorrow for their "fight" but they should certainly be thanking God that the storm cell just grazed the stadium as it blew down International Boulevard.

I'd like to give Carl a call, just to get his first hand take on the events of the evening - but I'd say he and his operations people will be a little busy the rest of the night!