Hinman meeting shuts one day early due to tornado

Atlanta鈥擜 surprise tornado that heavily damaged the Georgia World Congress Center and other structures in downtown Atlanta March 14 forced the Thomas P. Hinman Dental Meeting to close early for only the second time in its nearly century-long history.

Just after 9:30 p.m. on that Friday, the 96th Hinman meeting had completed its second day, logging some 22,600 attendees for the first two days at the GWCC.

Upstairs on the eighth floor in the south tower of the adjacent Omni Hotel at CNN Center, Dr. John T. Frey, a member of the Council on ADA Sessions from Grand Rapids, Mich., was watching an approaching storm through the glass window wall of his room overlooking the CNN Center.

He had just returned from dinner with friend and past CAS Chair Dr. Ken McDougall and his wife Rosemary, and was relaxing in front of the television. Dr. Frey was attending the Hinman as an official ADA scout.

“Up until Friday at 9:40 p.m., I was very impressed with the meeting,” said Dr. Frey. “I was enjoying what I was seeing and taking lots of notes.

“About 9:40 I heard the rain start and it sounded like hail was hitting my window as well. I went closer to the windows鈥攔eally a floor-to-ceiling glass wall鈥攁nd I remember thinking how strange it looked. It was a pale green-yellow color and the wind had really ramped up, and there were things mixed in with the rain and wind, like debris. The strangest thing was that the wind was blowing completely horizontally across my windows.”

On the 14th floor, Dr. Marshall L. Wade of Woodbury, Minn., a continuing education speaker for the meeting, had just put the finishing touches on his Saturday lecture, ironically titled, “Leadership in Times of Crisis,” and joined his wife Terri on their hotel balcony to watch the lightning.

“We tease my wife because she’s a natural phenomenon freak,” said Dr. Wade. “She had just gotten in from the airport and she was out on the balcony watching the lightning. When I came out to look over her shoulder, I didn’t see lightning. I saw house-sized debris coming toward us.

“Then the windows were bowing and started to explode,” said Dr. Wade. “My wife and I ran back into the room and headed for the bathtub as the windows and glass doors blew in. We were crouched in the bathtub and the building was shaking so violently that I was worried it would collapse or come apart.”

Dr. Frey said when the building started shaking he grabbed his pants and his athletic shoes and ran toward his door.

“When I opened my door, there was a tremendous gush of wind from the hallway into my room,” said Dr. Frey. “and I had to struggle to get out. I tried to close my door as if to separate myself from what was happening in my room, but I was unable to close it against the wind. The roar was tremendous. One of the light fixtures in the hallway fell near my feet to the floor.”

He heard three women in the darkened hallway screaming, and called to them as he held up his cell phone to light the way to the stairwell and down to ground level.

“I was in survival mode,” said Dr. Frey. “At the time, there was no question what to do. I was surviving. When I thought I was safe on the ground at the bottom of the stairwell, that’s when I put on my pants. I wasn’t worried about it. It wasn’t a priority. If I had needed to run away from the building in my boxers and socks to get out, I would have.”

Outside the hotel, said Dr. Frey, “It looked like a bomb had gone off. Every car and taxi around the hotel had its windows blown in. There was debris everywhere鈥攎ost of it broken glass. I wandered around in stunned confusion. I wanted to return to my room, but I didn’t have my room key with me and I didn’t know how safe the building was.”

After several attempts, Dr. Frey reached Dr. McDougall on his cell phone and went to the McDougalls’ room in the north tower to watch storm coverage on television.

“About 1 a.m. I went back to the south tower and got another room key at the front desk and made the trek up to my room,” said Dr. Frey. “The key was working but the door handle was jammed. Some maintenance workers came by and they used a crowbar to open the door for me.”

Dr. Frey said the eight workers and he entered to find the entire glass wall overlooking the convention center was gone.

“It wasn’t until I saw the condition of the room that it really hit me what had happened,” Dr. Frey said. “I got a little light-headed seeing that open wall where I’d been standing right before I ran out.”

“At dinner earlier that same night, I had joked with Ken and Rosemary that I was their third wheel, and then I ended up sleeping in their room for the rest of the night. They were so kind and helpful.”

After the tornado had passed, Dr. Wade and his wife climbed out of the bathtub, packed their bags and headed downstairs. They met up with fellow Hinman speaker Dr. Hal Crossley and helped him get his luggage downstairs, too.

“It looked like a war zone outside, said Dr. Wade.

With Dr. Crossley’s help, the Wades were able to get a room in a hotel two blocks away and they stayed on in Atlanta until their flight left on Sunday.

“The Hinman people were amazing,” said Dr. Wade. “My host called every day and made sure that we got to the airport OK. As a whole, I didn’t see anyone freaking out during the crisis. People were calm, helping each other and especially the people in the dental profession. It’s how you’d want your peers to react.”

His wife, said Dr. Wade, reflected on the experience by expressing a wish to chase a storm some day.

“But I think this episode took some of the romance out of that idea for me,” he said. “I could fee the power of the pressure change, the incredible power when the windows exploded, and I have a deep respect for things that are out of our control.”

Dr. Wade has revised his leadership presentation since the tornado. It is now titled, “Strength for the Journey: Thoughts from Inside the Atlanta Tornado.”

“The tornado to me is an appropriate metaphor for the maelstrom that life can become,” he said.

Saturday morning Dr. Frey called Experient, the ADA travel agency, which quickly arranged a flight home for him leaving at 10 a.m.

“I was safe at home by noon, but I kind of lost it when my wife Lisa picked me up at the airport. When I unpacked, I found glass in my clothes and dumped glass and bits of insulation and twigs and leaves out of the dress shoes I had worn every day at the meeting.

“I’m a little rattled,” he added, “but I didn’t get hurt or cut. It’s amazing. The hotel was full because of the dental meeting, the [Southeastern Conference men’s tournament] basketball games, proms and other events. I saw girls in prom dresses, using sheets as shawls to keep warm after the tornado. We were lucky.”

Dr. Frey is in his fourth and final year on the Council on ADA Sessions.

“This was my last scouting trip and it was such an awesome meeting,” said Dr. Frey. “I’m sorry it ended so quickly, because I was looking forward to observing on Saturday. I’m thrilled to be on this council. I’ve really enjoyed it.”

Near the convention center, the Georgia Dome was filled with about 18,000 fans watching a college basketball game that went into overtime and another 16,000 fans were watching an NBA game in Phillips Arena in the same complex when the tornado hit. According to Associated Press reports, one man was killed and damage estimates are expected to exceed $150 million.

Officials at the Georgia World Congress Center and the Omni Hotel issued statements late Friday night that Saturday’s meeting activities could not be held in their facilities due to safety issues.

“It’s unfortunate that we had to close the meeting one day early, but with the damage to the facilities and the safety of our attendees and exhibitors our primary concern, we were left with no alternative,” said Dr. Dan Dunwody III, general chairman of the 2008 Hinman Dental Meeting. “We are just relieved that there were apparently no serious injuries to our attendees and exhibitors. Given the damage to the infrastructure downtown, it was nothing short of a miracle that there were so few injuries to the thousands and thousands of people in Atlanta.”

Hinman Dental Society members and meeting staff worked through the night Friday to alert attendees and exhibitors to the early closing. They manned an information booth in the Omni Hotel south tower and established a hospitality area where attendees could have breakfast and lunch before planning for an early departure from Atlanta. Each of the meeting’s 78 speakers had a HDS member host and every host immediately checked on the safety of their speaker and helped them relocate to other hotels if necessary and reschedule flights home. Some Atlanta-area hosts even opened their homes to speakers in need of lodging.

The GWCC was closed over the weekend as the state fire marshal and a team of assessors inspected the building. The walls, ceiling and doors of Exhibit Hall A鈥攚here all the meeting’s technical exhibits were housed were damaged. Hall A was the area of the convention center hardest hit by the tornado.

“I’m proud of how the Hinman volunteers and staff really pulled together as a team to keep attendees and exhibitors informed, help them make flight arrangements and ensure they had access to lodging and food until they could leave downtown Atlanta,” said Dr. Dunwody. “We appreciate the Hinman members’ efforts to make this happen and we are grateful for the understanding and support of our attendees and exhibitors.”

Attendees who purchased tickets in advance for Saturday courses, including registered attendance lectures, participation courses, videotaping sessions and a homes tour and luncheon will automatically receive refunds within six weeks. They do not need to contact Hinman to receive a refund.

At least 24,000 attendees were expected for the meeting, which scheduled more than 200 courses and 900 technical exhibits.

This is only the second time the meeting has not been conducted in its entirety since it began in 1911. In 1931, the meeting was cancelled when Dr. Thomas P. Hinman died, and renamed for him.

The Hinman Dental Society is a study club comprised of more than 700 dentist members, primarily from the Atlanta-metro area. It is a nonprofit organization that provides more than $250,000 annually in scholarships and gifts to dental education programs. This year, Hinman donated $500,000 each to the University of Alabama and the University of Tennessee dental schools to endow a chair.

For more information, log on to www.hinman.org .聽