ATLANTA — What was that? The Georgia Dome is shaking. It’s loud, like a train is riding along the dome’s roof.
With 2 minutes 11 seconds remaining in overtime between Mississippi State and Alabama in the Southeastern Conference tournament, serious weather was coming through the area.
There were at least two rips in the fabric of the dome’s roof, causing the game to be stopped. The National Weather Service was reporting severe weather in Atlanta and fans had been advised to stay inside. The players had been sent off the court and a cool breeze could be felt blowing through the arena.
Announcements are being made asking people to stay calm, but many fans in the temporary seating area quickly started to move out of their seats.
Update, 10:29 p.m. An announcement has been made at the Georgia Dome that the Southeastern Conference quarterfinal between Mississippi State and Alabama will resume in 20 minutes.
The game was delayed when severe weather ripped away two panels from the side of the Georgia Dome. A reporter said a round piece of metal came flying onto one of the press tables and bounced into the air. There have been no injuries reported.
The public address announcer said an inspection has been conducted and the Dome has been declared structurally safe.
The crowd is still buzzing. Overtime is exciting, but not like this.
“They say tornadoes sound like a train and that sounded like a train,” said Alice Conner, a Tennessee basketball fan who was seated high in the Dome. “We saw stuff flying, some fabric. People were calm, I was surprised. They just started walking down out of here. Nobody was screaming or crying. I was talking to people back home and they said the broadcast on the TV of the game just went out.”
When the Dome opened in 1992 it was the largest cable-supported roof in the world. It is as tall as a 29-story building and the roof material is a Teflon fiberglass that looks like a parachute from the outside.
Two panels on the side of the building were torn away and there was insulation in some seats, but not seats used for basketball.
Update, 11:40 p.m.: The game resumed after a 65-minute delay. Mississippi State beat Alabama, 69-67, but the Georgia-Kentucky game that was to follow has been postponed. That scrambled the schedule for the tournament, since the final is scheduled to be played Sunday, hours before the N.C.A.A. brackets are announced. Now Georgia and Kentucky may have to play twice on Saturday.
Update, Midnight: The Hawks were playing the Clippers are Philips Arena, which is near the Georgia Dome. Here’s the AP story on the storm:
ATLANTA (AP) — A severe storm ripped through downtown Atlanta on Friday night, injuring several people and damaging skyscrapers, hotels and two major sports arenas that were filled with thousands of pro and college basketball fans.
National Weather Service officials said they were unsure if a tornado had touched down, but wind was clocked at up to 60 miles an hour as the storm moved through the city.
On its Web site, CNN said its headquarters sustained ceiling damage, allowing water to pour into the atrium, as well as shattered windows in the CNN.com newsroom and the company’s library.
A firefighter outside the CNN building said three people in the vicinity had been transported to hospitals, including a child with head injuries. He said none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening.
Atlanta Police spokesman Ronald Campbell said authorities had blocked off roads around the CNN Center, where heavy debris filled the streets. A chair from the skyscraper’s lobby sat in the middle of the street, flanked by cars crushed by debris from the building.
Most of the damage was concentrated in downtown Atlanta, Campbell said.
Update, 12:30 p.m.: The SEC is considering playing three games on Saturday, with the winner of a morning game between Georgia and Kentucky returning later in the day to play a semifinal against Mississippi State. They’ll have to decide soon, if that’s the way they want to go.
“We planned for a lot of things,” Mississippi State Coach Rick Stansbury said. “We didn’t plan for a tornado.”
The Quad's Connor Ennis leads a panel discussing H. G. Bissinger's book.
Pete Thamel covers college sports for The New York Times. For the past three years, he’s covered the three games that could well define this so-called "golden age" of college football: U.S.C.’s “Bush Push” win at Notre Dame; Texas’s upset of U.S.C. in the Rose Bowl; and Boise State’s tricked out win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. Before joining The Times, Thamel covered college sports for ESPN.com, ESPN Magazine, the Syracuse Post-Standard and The Daily Orange. A native of Ware, Mass., Thamel graduated from Syracuse University in 1999.
Thayer Evans is a freelance writer who has been contributing to The New York Times for more than two years. Evans also writes for the Houston Chronicle as well as other newspapers and magazines. He played college basketball at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, an NAIA school in Bartlesville, Okla.
Connor Ennis has been a staff editor in the sports department of The New York Times since November 2006. Before coming to the Times, he worked for The Associated Press, where he was a supervising editor on the national sports desk in New York. While with the AP, he covered the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and the 2006 World Cup in Germany. A native of Dallas, Pa., he graduated from Syracuse University in 2000.
Ray Glier is a freelance reporter who, in addition to The New York Times, contributes to USA Today, MSNBC, The Atlanta Business Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Miami Herald and, his favorite, Masters Athlete, a Chicago-based magazine for older athletes. Glier is a graduate of West Virginia University and his favorite part of being a freelancer is looking in the mirror in the morning and saying, "Hi, Boss."
2 Comments
How could the sec powers that be even consider the possibilty fo making college atheletes play two games in one day! This is not jr. high were they only play 6 min quaters or only run if they feel likr it.This is already a disadvantage for UK because of the fact that THE”Dwags” now have had an extra day’s rest since there game on thursday which is not how these tour. are designed, becauseas all know 24 hour delay makes all the difference in a tour. enviroment. SEC forget aboput the money once and think of our atheletes.
— ukkid627What a strange and scary event. It’s disturbing to contemplate what might have happened had Alabama not hit a 3-pointer to tie the game and send it to overtime. That would have led the game to end on time, and hundreds of Alabama and Mississippi State fans would have been outside the arena on their way home when the storm hit, rather than safely inside the Georgia Dome.
— Holt from New York