Flooding can cause caskets to float away and headstones to disappear as climate change hits cemeteries

A coffin juts out of a riverbank.
(Courtsey photo by Judy Blair Berry)

Climate change can mean prolonged or repeated flooding in some areas unprepared for submersion; graveyards and cemeteries are experiencing unearthed remains and floating caskets, reports Dinah Voyles Pulver of USA Today. "Thousands of graves have been disturbed in cemeteries nationwide in the past 30 years. Flooding, erosion and other climate-related weather disasters have been reported in at least 21 states and 15 countries over the past three decades. Coffins have washed away, and bones have been exposed in big cities and tiny hamlets."

Cemeteries have long struggled with neglect and upkeep expenses, but extreme weather has amplified the problem. Judy Blair Berry and her husband told Pulver of a prime example. The couple was "motoring along the Pearl River in Copiah County, Mississippi, when she looked up from the boat to see a casket jutting out of the bank above the river. Pieces of gravestones lay scattered on the shore. . . . Mississippi, and its neighbors to the north are among the states in the eastern half of the United States experiencing more rainfall extremes since the 1990s, including increases in the number of days with more than an inch of rain."

Families have had to rebury loved ones, and state and local governments, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and cemetery associations "are already spending millions to preserve cemeteries and build seawalls, and relocate or rebury remains," Pulver reports. "Perhaps nowhere have the effects of climate change had more impact on cemeteries than in Louisiana. At least 11 hurricanes have pummeled the Bayou State since 2002, disturbing thousands of graves and washing away hundreds of vaults and caskets. . . . At least a dozen cemeteries in southern Louisiana parishes have succumbed to rising seas and sinking land, The Associated Press has reported."

Pulver explains, "Water can infiltrate a burial site in several ways, and each type of casket, whether it's sealed, unsealed or inside a vault, can develop issues. . . . Options are available to help protect cemeteries and have been used at some locations in the U.S., including adding seawalls and stabilizing shorelines. A more complex and expensive step also has been needed in some cemeteries: moving the graves to safer locations."