Cleanup efforts are underway at Erie Cemetery after recent storms caused extensive damage across the property.<\/p>\n
Officials say more than 100 trees were knocked down, disrupting gravesites and damaging mausoleums, columbariums, and sections of the cemetery\u2019s fencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably well over 100 trees, easily, probably more than that,\u201d said David Rinderle, Executive Director of Erie Cemetery. \u201cThere’s a lot of grave sites that have been disrupted, some mausoleums have been damaged. Some of our columbariums have been damaged, and then there’s many parts of our fence that have also been damaged as a result, so it’s significant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rinderle says employees from the cemetery\u2019s other two locations are being brought in to help with the cleanup.<\/p>\n
The extent of the damage has also surprised longtime employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of our grounds managers here has been here 27 years, I think, working for Erie Cemetery, and has never seen anything like this,\u201d Rinderle said. \u201cThis is far beyond anything we’ve experienced. Usually in storms, you might lose one or two trees here or there, but nothing to this extent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cemetery is temporarily closed because of safety hazards throughout the property. Officials say cleanup will continue through the weekend as crews work to address the most immediate concerns.<\/p>\n
Rinderle says the cemetery hopes to begin allowing volunteers to help once some of the safety issues have been addressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of safety concerns inside the cemetery, so we’re really limiting right now just to our employees and staff,\u201d Rinderle said. \u201cWe’ll see next week once we get some of the safety things looked at, if we can get some more people in, volunteers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials say they are grateful for the outpouring of support from the community, including people who have reached out offering to help.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you to the community people that have reached out,\u201d Rinderle said. \u201cWe’ve gotten a tremendous amount of emails and phone calls from people wanting to assist any way they can, so that’s fantastic, and we say thank you to the community for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Erie Cemetery officials say they will continue working throughout the weekend. Additional information about volunteer opportunities and other ways to support the cleanup will be available on the Erie Cemetery website, which you can access at the link below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleanup efforts are underway at Erie Cemetery after recent storms caused extensive damage across the property. Officials say…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11810,136,19371,138,137,296,139,6740,101743,65059,34893,101950],"class_list":["post-281874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-cemetery","tag-erie","tag-erie-cemetery","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-local","tag-news","tag-storm","tag-storm-aftermath","tag-storm-cleanup","tag-storm-damage","tag-storm-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}