The night that the lights went out in Georgia

Good lord, crazy stuff just happened.

I was over in Hamilton Hall, SCAD’s film building, because I had to capture the project I had shot this past weekend (you shoot on tape then you capture it with a tape deck to turn it into editable digital footage). It was about 9pm or so and a deck had just opened up so I began capturing my footage. About 5 minutes into the process, it started raining: hard. Everyone was like “what?” Soon after, water started pouring into the room through the ceiling. There was a huge leak and it was going all over one of the computers. I pulled out my phone to take a picture and as I pressed the button all of the lights went out.

“Crap.” I figured the generators would come on and we’d be back in business… but nothing. The staff came around and told us we should leave, there were no generators (apparently there’s just too much equipment there and there’s no way of powering everything). I had to leave Hamilton… with my tape still in the deck. I talked with a staff member and they told me they’d have my tape there tomorrow, but if someone takes it, I’m screwed: that’s 100% of my raw footage, without it there’s no proof I ever did the assignment.

I ran outside through the pouring (read: pouring) rain and waded through water already up to my ankles to jump into my vehicle (keep in mind that I also have my 500gb external hdd in a bag: hopefully it didn’t get wet). I close the door and start up the car, and dial Mallory on the phone to tell her how crazy this all was.

At least I thought it was crazy. When I pulled out of the Hamilton Hall parking lot, there were garbage cans everywhere, apparently the wind blew them into the street. After I dodged all of them I turned right onto MLK and realized this wasn’t any ordinary storm. All of the traffic lights were out as far as I could see. There were ambulances, police and fire trucks everywhere. And needless to say, there were wrecked cars all over the sides of the street. When the stoplights went out people apparently ran into each other, and lord only knows how many deaths happened tonight because of it.

I drove home very, very slowly with mostly straightaways (one left turn, and that was the hardest turn I’ve ever had: no one knew who should go). The water was halfway up my tires for much of the trip. I pulled into the dorm and realized that nowhere in the city had power: the entire city of Savannah lost power tonight. It was truly something out of a horror movie. People were just outside of their dorms, confused. Projects obviously had to be put on hold since it’s impossible to work without electricity: you need either light to see or a computer to work with.

We talked to some folks and decided to go out to the car to listen to the radio and get some news. On our way out to the vehicle the power of the dorms came back all at once—and everywhere else, too. Looking down the street, it seems like the stoplights are functioning as well. We went back to the room and I checked my computer, everything’s working fine. Hamilton closes in an hour, though, and I have no desire to go back out tonight. Too much adventure for me.

So that’s the story of the night that the lights went out in Georgia. I’ve still gotta work on a Life Drawing project for the morning, and I have an entire midterm to edit tomorrow (amidst going to two classes)—and I hope that the tape is still there. Might be hard to explain to my professor that it was in the deck when the power went out and someone never turned it in…