Hundreds of homes damaged in Birmingham, Fire Department

Tornado that tore through northwest Birmingham this evening damaged hundreds of homes in the city to varying degrees, Birmingham Fire Battalion Chief C.W. Mardis estimated.

There were probably close to 25 houses blown away on Hibernian Street alone, Mardis said.

His estimates were very preliminary because he and other firefighters were feverishly digging through the rubble to dig out people who were trapped.

Firefighters set up a triage station at a car wash on Dugan Avenue to deal with the "mass casualty incident.

Birmingham, Ala

Birmingham, is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2009, had a population of about 1,212,848; approximately one-quarter of Alabama's population.

Birmingham was founded in 1871, just after the American Civil War, through the merger of three pre-existing towns, and Birmingham grew from there, annexing many more of its smaller neighbors, into an industrial and railroad transportation powerhouse, especially in mining, the iron and steel industry, and railroading. Birmingham was named for Birmingham, England, once one of the major metal manufacturing industrial cities of England. Most of the original settlers who founded Birmingham were of English ancestry. It was planned as a city where cheap, non-unionized, African-American labor from rural South Alabama could be employed in the city's steel mills and blast furnaces, giving it a competitive advantage over industrial cities in the Midwest and Northeastern United States.

From its founding through the end of the 1960s, Birmingham was the primary industrial center of the Southern United States. The astonishing pace of Birmingham's growth during the period from 1881 through 1920, Birmingham earned its nicknames "The Magic City" and "The Pittsburgh of the South." Much like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Birmingham's major industries were iron and steel production, plus a major component of the railroading industry, where rails and railroad cars were both manufactured in Birmingham. In the field of railroading, the two primary hubs of railroading in the Deep South were Atlanta, Georgia, and Birmingham, beginning in the 1860s and continuing through to the present day. Going clockwise from the due north, Birmingham is the nexus of railroad lines that connect it with Nashville, Tennessee; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Atlanta, Georgia; Columbus, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; and Memphis, Tennessee.

From Birmingham's early days onward, the steel industry has always played a crucial role in the local economy. Though the steel industry no longer has the same prominence it once held in Birmingham, steel production and processing continue to play a key role in the economy. Several of the nation's largest steelmakers, including CMC Steel, U.S. Steel, McWane, and Nucor, all have a major presence in Birmingham. In recent years, local steel companies have announced about $100 million worth of investment in expansions and new plants in and around Birmingham.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Birmingham's economy was transformed by investments in bio-technology and medical research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and its adjacent hospital. The UAB Hospital is a Level I trauma center providing health care and breakthrough medical research. UAB is now the area's largest employer and the largest in Alabama with a workforce of about 20,000. Health care services provider HealthSouth, Surgical Care Affiliates and Diagnostic Health Corporation are also headquartered in the city.Caremark Rx was also founded in the city.

Birmingham is also a leading banking center, serving as home to two major banks: Regions Financial Corporation and BBVA Compass. SouthTrust, another large bank headquartered in Birmingham, was acquired by Wachovia in 2004. The city still has major operations as one of the regional headquarters of Wachovia, which itself is now part of Wells Fargo Bank. In November 2006, Regions Financial merged with AmSouth Bancorporation, which was also headquartered in Birmingham. They formed the 8th largest U.S. bank (by total assets). Nearly a dozen smaller banks are also headquartered in the Magic City, such as Superior Bank and (until its failure in 2009) New South Federal Savings Bank. As of 2009, the finance & banking sector in Birmingham employed 1,870 financial managers, 1,530 loan officers, 680 securities commodities and financial services sales agents, 380 financial analysts, 310 financial examiners, 220 credit analysts, and 130 loan counselors.

The telephone company that is now owned by AT&T, which was formerly BellSouth and before that South Central Bell, which had its headquarters in Birmingham, has a major nexus in Birmingham, supported by a skyscraper downtown.

The insurance companies Protective Life, Infinity Property & Casualty, ProAssurance, and Liberty National have their headquarters in Birmingham, and these employ a large number of people in Greater Birmingham.

Birmingham is also a powerhouse of construction and engineering companies, including BE&K, Brasfield & Gorrie and B.L. Harbert International which routinely are included in the Engineering News-Record lists of top design and international construction firms.

Two of the largest soft-drink bottlers in the United States, each with more than $500 million in sales per year, are located in Birmingham. The Buffalo Rock Company, founded in 1901, was formerly a maker of just ginger ale, but now it is a major bottler for the Pepsi Cola Company, and the Coca-Cola Bottling Company, United, founded in 1902, is the third-largest bottler of Coca-Cola products in the United States.

The Birmingham metropolitan area has consistently been rated as one of America's best places to work and earn a living based on the area's competitive salary rates and relatively low living expenses. One study published in 2006 at the Web site Salary.com determined that Birmingham was second in the nation for building personal net worth, based on local salary rates, living expenses, and unemployment rates.

A 2006 study by Web site Bizjournals.com calculated Birmingham's "combined personal income" (the sum of all money earned by all residents of an area in a year) at $48.1 billion.

Birmingham

Birmingham, is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands county of England. It is the most populous British city outside London, with a population of 1,028,701 (2009 estimate), and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the United Kingdom's second most populous urban area with a population of 2,284,093 (2001 census). Birmingham's metropolitan area, which includes surrounding towns to which it is closely tied through commuting, is also the United Kingdom's second most populous with a population of 3,683,000.

A medium-sized market town throughout the medieval period, Birmingham grew to international prominence in the 18th century at the heart of the Midlands Enlightenment and subsequent Industrial Revolution, which saw the town at the forefront of worldwide developments in science, technology and industrial organisation, producing a series of innovations that laid many of the foundations of modern industrial society.By 1791 it was being hailed as "the first manufacturing town in the world".Birmingham's distinctive economic profile, with thousands of small workshops practicing a wide variety of specialised and highly-skilled trades, encouraged exceptional levels of creativity and innovation, and provided a diverse and resilient economic base for an industrial prosperity that was to last into the final quarter of the 20th century. Its resulting high level of social mobility also fostered a culture of broad-based political radicalism, that under leaders from Thomas Attwood to Joseph Chamberlain was to give it a political influence unparalleled in Britain outside London, and a pivotal role in the development of British democracy

With a city GDP of $90bn (2008 est., PPP), Birmingham has the second-largest urban economy in the United Kingdom and the 72nd-largest in the world. Although the city grew to prominence as a manufacturing and engineering centre, its economy today is dominated by the service sector, which in 2008 accounted for 86% of its employment. Birmingham is the largest centre for employment in public administration, education and health in Great Britain, and after Leeds and Glasgow it is the third-largest centre for employment in banking, finance and insurance outside London. It is ranked as a gamma- world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.

Two of Britain's largest banks were founded in Birmingham – Lloyds Bank (now Lloyds Banking Group) in 1765 and the Midland Bank (now HSBC Bank) in 1836 – as well as Ketley's Building Society, the world's first building society, in 1775. In 2010, Cushman & Wakefield stated that Birmingham was the third best place in the United Kingdom to locate a business, and the 18th best in Europe.

Tourism is also an increasingly important part of the local economy. With major facilities such as the International Convention Centre and National Exhibition Centre the Birmingham area accounts for 42% of the UK conference and exhibition trade. The city's sporting and cultural venues attract large numbers of visitors.

The city's three Universities, (Aston University, University of Birmingham and Birmingham City University) and two University colleges have over 65,000 students and employ around 15,000 staff, making a significant contribution to the city's economy as well as its research and innovation base.