ATLANTA - Commuters to downtown Atlanta were being encouraged to stay home Monday as cleanup in the area continued after a tornado ripped a path of destruction through the city's core.
Many streets were closed and some traffic lights remained out.
Broken glass still littered the ground and police warned pedestrians to watch for glass and other debris that could fall from buildings.
"I could have walked faster," said Kendra Wright, 22, an office manager downtown whose 20 minute commute took an hour. "I just hope it's not this bad going home."
At least 27 people were hurt but no deaths reported in the tornado that swept through Friday night. But two were killed in northwest Georgia when a separate storm moved through Saturday.
Jerry Paul Albers, 71, was killed by flying debris, Floyd County Coroner Barry Henderson said. In Polk County, Bonnie Gene Turner, 63, was killed when a tornado demolished her home and threw her and her husband into a field, Coroner Trey Litesey said. Her husband survived and is in critical condition at Erlanger hospital in Chattanooga, hospital spokeswoman Sharon Cahill said.
But in Atlanta, cleaning up the shattered glass, torn roofs and debris-littered streets of downtown will be a much quicker task than repairing the financial damage caused by the tornado, state officials said Sunday.
Several landmarks, including the Georgia World Congress Center, the Westin Peachtree Plaza and the Equitable Building, were in the six-mile path of the storm, which moved along the Atlanta skyline for about 20 minutes. The city's main convention center and two major hotels were hobbled as the convention season began.
This weekend alone, with the closing of the Georgia World Congress Center - a 3.9 million square-foot convention center - the city lost the Atlanta Home Show and a dental convention. And the Georgia Dome lost much of the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament.
The games were moved to north of downtown to Georgia Tech's much smaller gym on Saturday, preventing many fans from attending because of space constraints. The SEC is making plans to give refunds to fans unable to get into the tournament games, according to a statement on the conference's Web site. The plan could cost the conference about $1.8 million in revenue.
Dan Graveline, executive director of the Georgia World Congress Center, said on a walking tour with reporters and Gov. Sonny Perdue that it was still too early to quantify the damage, but added that crews were working to assess the wreckage. Graveline said he was hopeful repairs would begin soon, starting with the areas that could be fixed most quickly.
The tornado ripped through the roof of an exhibition hall in one building, leaving light fixtures, awnings, and pieces of the building's infrastructure dangling and exposed as workers continued to clear the scattered insulation, metal, glass and other debris littering the facility.
But the damage that's beyond the naked eye is also a concern, Graveline said.
"The critical part is what you can't see," he said. "That takes some time."
During the news conference, Perdue also expressed relief and gratitude for the minimal loss of life and quick response of emergency workers.
"You already see people working," Perdue said. "This resource will be restored as quickly as possible."
Hotel officials said they were more worried about getting the Georgia World Congress Center back into shape as a conference venue than the state of their facilities, most of which sustained minor damage in comparison.
"All the major hotels downtown rely on the Congress Center as part of the package of bringing conventions to the city," said Ed Walls, general manager of the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel, which was damaged by the tornado.
Walls estimated that about 30 percent of the hotel's business came from events related to the facility, and that the first four months are among the busiest of the year for conventions in Atlanta.
Mike Sullivan, marketing director of The Omni Hotel at CNN Center, said hotel and convention center officials were expected to meet Monday to discuss their post-tornado options. If the Georgia World Congress Center is unable to host trade shows and meetings, the city's biggest hotels may have to host large conferences that normally would have been held at the convention center.
"Hotels really are working hard together to try to keep people here," Sullivan said.