It’s a difficult scene to absorb and a painful and impossible picture to paint, and to top it all off, the scars remain from the horrific mudslide that took place last Wednesday at the Mt. Zion Cemetery along Fairmont Avenue in Wheeling.
And although the obvious question – What’s next? – remains unanswered, cemetery president Charles Yocke confirmed late Monday he’s received an outpouring of support and offers to help restore the historical burial ground after days of rain caused the saturated hillside to slide through the property. The mud toppled more than one hundred grave markers, some of which were buried and/or damaged in the incident.
“It’s been less than a week and this problem has received so much attention. It’s really been incredible. People from all over have been calling to find out what they can do to help,” Yocke reported. “And the media’s been on it, too. I’ve talked to media people from all over the country because the photos are just that unbelievable. When you see one of the photos, it just looks like the worst thing possible.
“I like the fact everything has been moving along quickly, but I know we’re going to get to the point where things will slow down to make sure this really gets taken care of,” he said. “And it’s not going to be cheap either. No way. This is going to be a big job.”
Yocke and nearby neighbor Paula Stein represent the final two volunteers from an effort in 2015 to take over the care of the cemetery, a burial ground that dates back to the Civil War years in the Wheeling area. “Thousands of individuals,” according to Yocke, have been interred at Mount Zion, and there is a map and a plethora of photos that will be utilized when returning grave markers to appropriate locations.
“We’ve had a lot of people ask us about how we’re going to be the markers back to where they belong, and that’s what we’ve been explaining to them,” he said. “But right now we don’t know what is out there in those piles of mud. We don’t know what condition the markers are in right now, and we’ve been explaining that to them, too.
“We may not know for months. It really depends on what the experts tell us they can do,” he said. “What I know for sure is that everyone is going to do their best.”
Yocke said he met Monday with representatives from Williams so two engineers could tour the cemetery, assess the damage, and develop plans for reconstruction.
“We had Mike Roberts and some other folks with Williams that visited, and they said they wanted to take a good look at the cemetery to see what their company could do to help us,” Yocke explained. “We walked the cemetery and even went to the top where the slide started, and they were using some GPS instruments to mark particular points during the walk around.
“After a couple of them went to the very top of the hill, they came back down and said there’s a chance even more dirt could come down,” he said. “So, there’s no way this is going to be an easy job to get this cemetery back to normal again. And it’s not going to be cheap either. You can just look at it and you can tell that.”
And it’s going to take much larger equipment than an average backhoe. At least that’s what Yocke expects to hear when he meets with state officials later this week.
“I’ve stared at the cemetery a good bit over the last week, and I’ve been a contractor my whole life, so I know what kind of equipment it’s going to be needed to fix this. I just have to wonder if there’s enough space for those machines,” Yocke said. “That was a lot of Earth that moved in that slide, and I think it’ll take those excavators they use when they do the work on the interstates.
“Obviously, it’s a water issue, so that means there’s a drainage issue that needs fixed or these slides are going to continue now,” he explained. “We have another engineer coming here from Morgantown and he’s the guy the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston uses at times, and then later this week (Del.) Shawn Fluharty is bringing the House Speaker (Roger Hanshaw) and some state historical preservation folks to take a hard look at the situation.”
