DEL.ICIO.USOne year later, tornado’s scars linger
Atlanta has mostly rebuilt from storm that caused more than $500 million in damage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, March 13, 2009
The cemetery, with its flowers and new growth, is more inviting than ever. Most of the homes in Cabbagetown are repaired, the roof tarps gone. The greatest reminder of the year-ago tempest is a soaring downtown Atlanta hotel whose replacement windows are still on order.
Yet other vestiges remain of the March 14, 2008, tornado that roared through the city center. One can discern it in the occasional shard of hotel window, hidden in the grass; in the torn magnolias where Oakland Cemetery’s dead rest; and in the memories of people who watched destruction come out of the dark.
ALLEN SULLIVAN / aesullivan@ajc.com
The Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts in Cabbagetown sustained some of the worst damage in the city and many residents had to evacuate.
ALLEN SULLIVAN / aesullivan@ajc.com
Exterior repairs have been completed and the homeowners have moved back in.
Hyosub Shin / hshin@ajc.com
Many buildings were destroyed as this aerial photo taken over an area just east of downtown the day after the tornado shows.
• Photos: Before and after the tornado
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• Aerial view of the damage
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The storm damaged the Georgia Dome and forced the SEC Mens Basketball Tournament to relocate to Georgia Tech. It shoved a steeple off a Vine City church. It collapsed a wall of a DeKalb Avenue store where Gregory Lee, 45 and homeless, tried to hide. The twister found him and killed him.
And then it was gone, energy spent, vanished.
The tornado may have been the priciest catastrophe to hit Atlanta since Sherman’s troops torched the city in 1864. State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine estimated that insurers paid more than $500 million to repair homes and businesses. That figure doesn’t include infrastructure repairs or what utilities spent restoring power, water and other services, he said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency stepped in with disaster aid totaling more than $3 million — including payments in Fulton and DeKalb counties, plus help for homeowners and businesses in Bartow, Burke, Floyd Jefferson and Polk counties, hit by twisters March 15.
The bill, said Barb Keeney, has been paid — with interest. Her family owns the Milltown Arms Tavern in Cabbagetown. It was open when mayhem twisted out of the sky.
“Everybody was walking around in a daze,” said Keeney. “It really struck me: Some of these people lost their homes.”
‘The view has changed’
Stroll downtown Atlanta today. Take in the tall buildings, dark against the spring sun, or sniff the air, welcome as a laugh in church. Then direct your gaze to Centennial Olympic Park, closed for five days after the tornado.
After the storm, segments of the 21-acre site looked as if were littered with diamonds — the glittering remnants of windows. Lethal and fast, they flew like bullets. Crews replaced some tracts with new sod, a cost of $30,000.
Buildings across downtown looked as if they multiple black eyes. The tornado blasted out panes at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center, Georgia Pacific building and Westin Peachtree Plaza.
The glass on the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce building was just recently repaired, along with 5,000 pieces of glass at the Omni. Aged panes at the Tabernacle, which lost part of its roof, also have been replaced.
One year later, the Westin is still missing 81 custom-made panes. Because the originals are no longer manufactured, every exterior window of the 73-story hotel this spring will have to be replaced.
“The view has changed,” said Emory Amos, a community activist who lives in Vine City.
It’s certainly less cluttered. The tornado yanked a maple tree out of the ground and tossed it two blocks. The tree Amos climbed as a kid landed in the parking lot of the Georgia World Congress Center.
“Lots of trees are gone,” he said. “That’s the first thing I noticed.”
He was home when the storm hit. Angela Scott, her mother and two children were not — a good thing, they discovered.
They were at Philips Arena, watching the Hawks play the Los Angeles Clippers, unaware that the real drama was taking place blocks away. An oak hit their modest home of 17 years. It cracked the house like a nut.
“There were people trying to get us out, not knowing we weren’t there,” Scott said.
Her house has since been repaired, as have most of the residences damaged in Vine City.
Amos said the tornado was, in some respects, a “blessing.” Home Depot chipped in $250,000 to help cover insurance deductibles or fix homes that did not have coverage, he said. Plenty of people turned out to help, too.
“We really did become a community that day,” Amos said. “We had 200, 250 volunteers out helping us rebuild the next day.”
‘We took a whack, and now we’re back’
The tornado also was an unprecedented climatic event for Atlanta. A NASA study concluded it was likely the result of a stew of bad conditions — of intermittent rain that may have created favorable conditions for severe storms to form, coupled with a sprawling urban landscape that possibly helped accelerate winds that reached skyward and formed a funnel.
On Saturday, historic Oakland Cemetery will open again for guided tours. But years will pass before it regains the tree canopy it lost. Nearly 100 trees were destroyed, and no amount of cash — damages are estimated at $3 million — can hurry an oak’s growth.
About 100 monuments that qualified for government repair funds have been fixed, yet more than 200 still need attention, said David Moore, executive director of the Historic Oakland Foundation.
Volunteers have planted about 130 oaks, maples, dogwoods and shrubs. Daffodils and buttercups dot the ground, bright yellow against the gray stones. The greenery, most of it donated, totaled more than $20,000.
Meanwhile, the neighbors immediately east of the cemetery today roll out their Cabbagetown Arts Festival — their way of blowing a raspberry at the twister.
“I have a strong bond with the neighborhood that I never had before,” said Debbie Weeks, whose Tye Street home was flattened by an old oak. She moved back into her rebuilt residence, brilliant as a periwinkle, two weeks ago.
At the Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts condo/apartment complex, a building partially demolished by the storm’s 130 mph winds has been repaired and reopened. Sales agents are hosting an open house there Saturday.
Leslie Williamson, marketing agent for the project, reached into her memory for a slogan posted on a sign earlier this year: “We took a whack, and now we’re back.”
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