Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Brookwood, AL

Brookwood is a city in eastern Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, located between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham along State Highway 216.

The community was first known as Horsehead and was reached from Tuscaloosa by a plank road.

Coal mining began in the area in 1889 under the Standard Coal Company, and four communities grew up around the mining center: East Brookwood, Central Brookwood, West Brookwood and Kellerman.

The separate mining communities eventually consolidated, and Brookwood incorporated in September 1977.

Brookwood has grown quickly in recent decades: the 2020 census counted 2,504 residents, up from 1,829 in 2010, and in May 2022 the community was officially recognized as a city.

On September 23, 2001, two explosions at the nearby Jim Walter Resources Blue Creek No. 5 mine killed 13 miners, many of whom lived in Brookwood, in one of Alabama's worst mining disasters.

A federal mine-safety grant program, the Brookwood-Sago grants, was later named in part for the Brookwood disaster.

Brookwood's underground mines, now operated by Warrior Met Coal, extract metallurgical coal from the Blue Creek seam and ship it by barge down the Black Warrior River toward the Port of Mobile for steelmaking around the world.

Brookwood is part of the Tuscaloosa County School System and has its own elementary school, middle school and high school.

Brookwood has a mayor-council form of government and ZIP code 35444.