Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Tuscaloosa, AL

Tuscaloosa is a city in and the county seat of Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, sitting on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal Plain and the Piedmont meet.

The city was incorporated on December 13, 1819 — one day before Alabama became a state — and was named for Chief Tuskaloosa, combining the Choctaw words for "warrior" and "black," the same meaning carried by the Black Warrior River.

Tuscaloosa served as the capital of Alabama from 1826 to 1846, and the ruins of the old state capitol still stand in the city's Capitol Park.

It is known as the "Druid City" because of the numerous water oaks planted along its downtown streets beginning in the 1840s.

The 2020 census counted 99,600 residents in 40,817 households, making Tuscaloosa Alabama's fifth-most populous city, with a notably young median age of 27.1 years.

Tuscaloosa is home to the University of Alabama, founded in 1831, which remains the city's dominant economic and cultural engine and gives it a strong college-town character.

The university's Bryant-Denny Stadium, home of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team, holds more than 102,000 fans, and the city adopted the nickname "City of Champions" after the Tide's national championship seasons of 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2020.

The city is also home to Stillman College, a historically Black college, and Shelton State Community College.

In 1963 Tuscaloosa was the site of Governor George Wallace's "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" at the University of Alabama's Foster Auditorium, and in 1956 Autherine Lucy became the first Black student admitted to a white public university in Alabama when she enrolled there.

On April 27, 2011, a 1.5-mile-wide EF4 tornado with winds estimated at 190 mph tore through Tuscaloosa, killing 44 people in the city and causing about $2.45 billion in damage, at the time the costliest tornado in U.S. history.