Over the past five weeks, crews with Bentley Tree Care have been working to remove fallen trees from the Erie Cemetery.
Last month, an estimated 500 of the cemetery’s 1,200 trees were either uprooted or significantly damaged by the September 3 windstorm.
“The trees here are massive,” said Bentley Tree Care owner Bill Bentley. “They are 120 feet tall, 180 years old. We’re working with trees that are historic, but the winds took them down and they are devastated.”
For weeks, the cemetery has been closed to the public, as the Erie Cemetery Association works to assess the headstones and monuments that were also damaged by the storm.
“We still have to do a pretty significant assessment on that,” said Erie Cemetery Association Executive Director David Rinderle. “There are many, many headstones and monuments that will have to be looked at and determine what course of action needs to be taken.”
While it’s up to the families who own plots to repair headstones, Rinderle said some of the gravestones are historical, which leads to complications.
“There are many cases where there are no surviving family members, no next of kin, nobody is going to be around to do that,” said Rinderle. “The cemetery has to make a determination as to what they want to do, some sort of project to restore some of the monuments in the cemetery.”
Once the property is cleared, the cemetery will then focus on tree restoration.
“When you get a 100-year storm, you start planting next spring and it’s going to take money to do that,” said Bentley. “It’s going to take the community behind them, because in another 200 years, you want trees here. You have to replace these trees now.”
According to Rinderle, the cemetery is about halfway done with cleanup efforts.
He hopes to have the cemetery reopen by Thanksgiving.