Jerry Mays, the town's mayor, said the tornado that destroyed the town's grocery store and medical clinic was a half-mile wide and travelled for about 20 miles (32km).

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Today, a year later, a huge weed-filled lot now sits where one Tuscaloosa neighborhood used to be -- part of the huge mile-wide swath that the tornado cut through town at McFarland Boulevard and 15th Street.

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An EF2 tornado devastated the nearby town of Marysville.

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But they and others from the Oklahoma City suburb spent Friday reflecting on the mammoth tornado that ripped through their town days earlier.

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It was one year ago next week that an F4 tornado carved a path right through the town of Tuscaloosa.

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Kiowa County Hospital, destroyed by a massive category 5 tornado in 2007 that damaged 95 percent of the town of Greensburg, Kansas, has been reconstructed with a 100 percent renewable wind energy system.

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And then there is Republican Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama who, in 2011, held town meetings back home to help educate constituents victimized by a devastating tornado as to how to go about getting federal assistance money that his constituents would not have to pay back.

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The tornado toppled trees, blew off roofs and left most of the rural town without power.

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