Five Years after the April 27, 2011, Tuscaloosa Tornado: A Study in Community Resilience

On April 27, 2011, the city of Tuscaloosa, AL was struck by an EF 4 tornado. The losses to the city were catastrophic; 43 fatalities were recorded, economic losses totaled more than $2 billion, and almost 13% of the city building stock was either damaged or completely destroyed. This paper describes a methodology conducted in the summer of 2016 to assess the resilience of the Tuscaloosa community. Tuscaloosa parcels were investigated and assigned one of six categories of functionality change described in this paper. Each functionality change category was assigned a functionality change value to describe the effects of the change on the community. Parcels were also assigned return-to-functionality dates. Based on the results of the resilience study, 28% of the parcels found in the 1500 acre affected area remained vacant five years after the storm. 2010 census data was used to document trends between census data such as per-capita income and housing demographics and parcel information such as vacant lots and return-to-functionality date and the results are reported. The systematic resilience assessment described will be useful in analyzing the correlation between community characteristics and resilience in order to model and predict expected resilience of communities for future disasters.