Current mood:	anxious
Entry tags:	tornado

i just walked through a tornado.
holy fucking crap and shit.
my brother and i were just caught in a tornado in downtown atlanta.
like caught IN.
like i had to grab onto steel poles not to be blown away and there was huge steel beams flying by my head.
it happened like 2 hours ago but i'm still shaking.
i've had 3 shots of scotch and don't feel anything.

here's what went down.

so, my brother and i went to the Hawks game at Philips Arena which is in downtown atlanta.
for some reason around 9:15 he wanted to leave early - and he never wants to leave early.
he said he was feeling restless.
We had to pick eric up at the airport at 10 so we had some time to kill.

i suggested going over to centennial park to look at the illumination photography exhibition i had wanted to go to and it ends tomorrow. the park is across the street from philips.
so we walked over and were looking at the exhibit in the park - it was 7 foot by 7 foot lightboxes with photos on them that are backlit. it looks pretty cool. they were playing new agey music and in the distance was lightening rods. it was really neat but in retrospect felt a little dangerous and ominous.

We were looking at the photos and started hearing rain but didn't feel it - then i looked down and realized there was hail. I picked up a couple of pellets and we were like "hail? that's weird" and then it started coming down a little harder so we went into a makeshift tent they had erected for the exhibit. we're standing inside with about 20-30 other people and dan goes "this is the type of rain that passes quickly right?" and i agreed.

all of the sudden i heard the tent creaking and swaying and i said to dan "let's get the hell out of here" and as we got out, the tent collapsed with tons of people still under it. the thing is i wanted to make sure people could get out and was ok but i noticed that a bunch of the illumination boxes were starting to come apart and fly around so my instinct was to just get the hell out of there.

i remember starting to run away from the boxes as fast as i could and that there was shit flying around me and that the wind was picking me up off the ground and i was freaking out about where my brother was and at one point i tried to stop and look around for dan but the wind knocked me over and was pushing me so i guided myself towards some steel benches that looked bolted to the cement and grabbed on as the wind started whipping me and i kept seeing debris around me and i kinda saw my brother running the same direction and then i got hit by something small in my forehead and let go of the chair then started running and being pushed by the wind again towards the centennial olympic drive and watched huge pieces of metal flying around me looking for something to hide behind.

then i kinda found a street lamp with a wide base and my brother caught up with me and we stood behind it for a sec shielding ourselves from debris and then decided the wind had stopped enough and we should run to the car which was in a structure.

as we were going the 3 blocks to the car we saw some crazy shit - a building had collapsed and a bunch of cars were buried under bricks, a couple of billboards had fallen over rows of cars in a lot i've parked in before, there was large pieces of metal and glass all over the street and wires buzzing and sparking. i kept stopping and pointing and complaining how i wish i had brought my camera and dan kept pulling at me to move and we got into the car and high tailed it out of downtown and all the lights were out and shit was strewn in the road. but i'm glad he was so adamant cause watching the news 15 minutes later after getting home it would've been impossible to get out of downtown if we had waited.

i'm a little less shaky but i don't think i'll be falling asleep anytime soon.
i've never felt so scared and on auto pilot before.
like i always thought in a crazy situation i'd freak out but like my brain thought rationally about what it needed to do to keep me safe.
i also feel strongly that there is a gaurdian angel watching over me and my brother.
philips arena sustained damage 15 minutes after we left and there was no reason why we needed to leave.
i kept asking my brother how we didn't get hit by debris and he kept answering "in movies people don't get hit all the time...." and it's a weird but appropriate point.

ok.
that's all i can write right now.

(***** edit: FYI, 2 days later and a handful of LJ entries can all be found tagged here) *****