My daughter, my wife and I visited the University of Alabama campus in late February of 2011 (about a month before the tornado) and started her college career t

My daughter, my wife and I visited the University of Alabama campus in late February of 2011 (about a month before the tornado) and started her college career there in August. When we returned to drop her off, the scale of the damage where the tornado ripped through Tuscaloosa was astonishing. There was an entire subdivision of suburban (stick-built) homes that looked like a pile of matchsticks. And there was a surprisingly small interface between the "completely destroyed" areas and "untouched" areas. By the time she graduated this May, the damage has been cleared away but the path of this tornado is still visible. There are many brand-new buildings and a lot of open ground, but none of the new construction aligns with the grid of streets in the area. For a family from Pennsylvania (where we rarely see tornados or their aftermath), it was quite eye-opening.