Over a decade ago, a tornado packing 100-mile-an-hour winds created a path of destruction through north Minneapolis and some of those impacts still linger today.

On Sunday, May 22, 2011, the lives of residents were changed forever — and so was the neighborhood.

Underneath the fixed-up homes and freshly planted trees, tragic memories remain rooted in north Minneapolis.

“It was horrible,” said north Minneapolis resident Makeda Zulu. “It was pretty bad.”

Zulu remembers the 2011 tornado that ripped through her neighborhood like it was yesterday.

The EF-2 tornado destroyed homes, displaced residents and uprooted thousands of trees.

“It sounded like a train then it got dark,” Zulu said. “If you walked a little bit, you’d see trees down everywhere.”

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board Forestry Department said it took months to clean up the toppled trees.

“We lost 2,600 trees, just the public trees. Not taking into account the trees in people’s yards,” Ralph Sievert, Minneapolis Park Board and Recreation Board forestry director, said.

Sievert made it his mission to replant more trees, 3,100 in total, to fill empty spaces that existed before the storm.

“When there’s rental homes or folks just don’t have the resources to plant and care for a tree on their property. There just tends to be less trees on private property,” Sievert said. “If you’re in an area where people are more affluent and have resources to plant and take care of trees, you have… more trees.”

There are programs across the city aiming to fill those gaps so all communities can reap the benefits.

Sievert said the shade from trees increases property values and decreases cooling costs.

According to the Minnesota DNR, the trees also come with health benefits like fewer cases of stroke and heat exhaustion and cleaner air to breathe.

“It [the tornado] shed light on a few issues not just lack of trees, but lack of investment in north Minneapolis,” Zulu said.

New developments have been built along the path of the storm, but some buildings still remain boarded up.

Zulu said it’s second nature for the community to respond with resilience.

“There are still many issues that need to be resolved, but then there are great things that have happened in the midst,” she said.

Sievert said it will take at least 30 years total for some of the trees to reach maturity and $5 million has been spent in the forestry department’s budget to replant trees in north Minneapolis.