A year after a devastating tornado left a trail of destruction on the North Side of Minneapolis, signs of the storm still dot the landscape. Thousands of trees are gone. The number of empty lots has grown. And there are still too many damaged and vacant buildings.

Yet overall a remarkable amount of progress has been made, thanks to community groups, government, business and nonprofits, and volunteers. A series of Star Tribune stories this week marking the anniversary of the storm reported that most of the major damage has been addressed. City figures show that of 3,700 damaged buildings, about 96 percent have been fixed or torn down or are undergoing repairs. Those numbers illustrate how much can be accomplished when Minnesotans band together to take on a huge challenge.

A Star Tribune analysis found that so far the storm cost about $80 million -- about half the initial $160 million estimate. Insurance companies paid the bulk of the costs -- $64 million -- largely to repair homes, according to the state Department of Commerce.

Although North Side residents seeking individual aid from FEMA were rejected just after the storm, about $6 million of the $8 million spent to repair infrastructure will be reimbursed by the federal agency. And 55 residents and seven businesses received loans via FEMA and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The city of Minneapolis, the parks department and the state spent several million dollars on the recovery effort, and nonprofit groups and businesses donated $3.75 million. Thousands of volunteers helped clean up. An estimated 6,000 trees were lost, but more than 600 have already been replaced, and another 3,100 will be planted this year.

Especially notable were the efforts of the Northside Community Response Team and Urban Homeworks -- community groups that helped coordinate many of the repairs by going house to house to find out what residents needed. Habitat for Humanity also deserves praise for doing free roof repairs or replacements for nearly 40 homes

According to the city's housing department, the 200 or so homes that haven't been fixed fall into three categories: They were bank-owned foreclosures; the owners had no insurance, or the owners collected the insurance money and walked away.

City officials are working with the banks and are going through the legal process to take over some of those properties. About 40 to 50 will be torn down, making way for residential or other uses. And Mayor R.T. Rybak recently announced that the city will build 100 new green homes on the North Side during the next five years.

The psychological scars remain for many North Side residents, and it certainly doesn't help that there are so many treeless blocks and vacant lots.

No doubt myriad challenges remain on the North Side. Prior to the storm, nearly 4,000 homes in the area had gone through foreclosure. The problems of poverty, crime, vacant buildings and unemployment were only exacerbated by the tornado.

At the same time, the response to the storm revealed that tremendous strides can be made when a city and community unite in the wake of a natural disaster. Similar energy and focus should be directed at the area's ongoing challenges -- well beyond the cleanup of the 2011 storm.