ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Riverside Cemetery is a historic burial ground in the Montford Historic District dating to 1885. The 87-acre cemetery is known for its rolling hillsides, winding pathways, huge old trees and old and new grave markers.
The city maintains the cemetery, which is part of Asheville’s parks system. But Tropical Storm Helene took a toll, and the cemetery has been closed since the storm because of unsafe conditions caused by debris.
Parks and Recreation’s Jonathan Neary said the damage at Riverside Cemetery was widespread.
“The uprooting was the bulk of the damage,” Neary said. “We’ve got over 11,000 gravesites and 132 suffered damage from tree fall. There is some ground settling. We’re not entirely sure whether that was from saturation from the rain. But there’s damage to the point where they might fall.”
The cleanup
Solid Waste Manager Jes Foster said a lot of debris has already been removed from the cemetery.
“We had the contractor come in and they used special equipment so they wouldn’t disturb the ground, and they went ahead and removed any hanging limbs that were dangerous and removed the trees, like the larger tree parts, but left the root balls intact for this evaluation process,” Foster said.
Western Carolina University’s forensic anthropology program, which specializes in archaeological and forensic fieldwork, is in the cemetery this week assessing the historical and cultural impacts of the damage.
“If you’ve had a chance to walk around this morning, you will probably notice you’ve got these really big stumps, right, that are sort of lying at various angles across the cemetery,” Western Carolina University anthropology professor Dr. Ben Steere said Tuesday.
“In some cases, when those trees fell down, they may have potentially disturbed graves, knocked over headstones as they tipped over. And so what our students are doing is the first part of a two-phase process in archaeological monitoring. We’re coming out, we’re recording location information, kind of doing damage assessment, understanding how badly each of these locations was damaged. And then what we’re going to do is make a recommendation for each of these locations and indicate whether, you know, there has been damage and this place is going to require additional archaeological monitoring when they actually remove the stumps.”
Crews have also removed cracked and hanging limbs.
“There’s an excellent park staff that works here, too, and they were definitely, you know, looking at every single tree, every single impact and noted that for the contractor, as well,” Foster said.
The plan right now is for the students to finish their archaeological assessments this week and prepare their reports. Then debris removal will hopefully be completed around the first of April.
“Then there’ll be a FEMA inspection for the rest of the damage assessment and look at how they’ll do permanent repairs to the park,” Foster said. “I’m not sure how long that process will take.”
Foster said the United States Army Corps of Engineers has been doing the debris removal.
“They’re experienced with this type of special situation, and they’ve got special equipment. If they do note any areas of sensitivity this week, then there’ll be an archaeologist on site during the removal process just to make sure nothing else gets missed,” Foster said.
The cleanup so far has been funded by FEMA.
“Basically, the process was the city asked the state for assistance. And the state asked FEMA to provide that assistance. Then FEMA tasked the Army Corps to do the work. And then the Army Corps hired a contractor to perform the work,” Foster said.
Before crews begin with stump removal, an archaeological assessment is required by FEMA Environmental Historic Preservation to determine the safest way to remove them and ensure sensitive historic matters are preserved.