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Funny what you can find laying around in the North Atlanta suburbs! Enough pool chlorine for the entire state of Nevada, for instance…

West side ATL, the cornerstone for this school was laid in 1923. According to reports I’ve read the school was last occupied in 1970, but there are records boxes in the basement dating to 1994. (It’s possible, even likely, that the school board was just using the basement for storage.)

This is the most deteriorated interior of a building I have ever seen. I wish I had brought a video camera to capture the sounds and movement of the water, which was raining in everywhere throughout the building. Water was dripping from ceilings and pouring down walls. The building was full of the sound of echoing water off concrete walls, like a concrete rainforest.

A “resident” of the building graciously gave us a tour and told stories of his life there, including his encounters with demons, the ghost of a small boy who returns at night, and occasionally the local sheriff.

I ran across this while finding an alternate route home from work one day. It appears to be an old winery. TK and I returned and photographed the outside and the facilities room. The rest of it is locked up, and it appears someone is in the process of moving stuff out of it.

According to the weather reports a tornado came through the area while we were photographing. We ended up seeking shelter in that fairly questionable aluminum structure. For some reason, the fantastically awful movie “Twister” came to mind.

Yeah. We do urbex during tornadoes. We’re hard core like that. Word.

Last night a tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta. I was visiting an old friend in Duluth, GA when it happened.

Once I heard about the damage, I headed back into town to see if my house was still standing. Thankfully, my block was spared. But neighborhoods on each side of me took some pretty moderate damage.

At daybreak the news helicopters started hovering over my roof and all my relatives started calling me when they saw my neighborhood on Fox News or CNN. So, I figured I might as well get up and walk around the area and take some pictures.

It is sad to see the damage to the historic neighborhood. The cotton mill lofts and the mill houses all took some damage. Much of it is minor, but some houses are completely destroyed by the oak trees that were ripped up by the twister.

The damage is extremely localized, which speaks to it being a tornado. My block suffered no damage at all.  Even the lightweight wicker furniture on my front porch is still in place, and it blows around during regular storms all the time. Yet on each side of me in the neighboring Cabbagetown and Old Forth Ward districts there is evidence of the tornado.