Emily Dalfrey lives across the street from Niblett’s Bluff Cemetery, where generations of her family are buried, in Vinton, Louisiana.
In 2016, a period of prolonged rainfall caused flooding so severe that people could drive boats over the cemetery. The water put so much pressure on the graves that some of the vaults, which are located near the surface, popped open. Some of Dalfrey’s own family members’ caskets were carried away and deposited in her yard.
Unsure how to restore the cemetery, the community contracted Gulf Coast Forensic Solutions, a company that helps people locate and rebury loved ones after natural disasters damage cemeteries.
“We truly would have not gotten it done if we would not have had that guidance and that help,” Dalfrey says of Gulf Coast’s assistance. “Because when you bury your family, you think they’re there forever.”
Louisiana has dealt with flooded cemeteries and caskets washing away for decades, but the problem is getting worse — and more widespread. As climate change increases the likelihood of weather-related disasters, many other states are now grappling with damaged cemeteries. And they’re looking to Louisiana for help.
Hurricanes, flooding, and mudslides
Charlie Hunter, the CEO of Gulf Coast Forensic Solutions, started in this line of work during his time at the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office, where he worked in death investigation. Normally, such a job involves investigating homicides and car accidents, but Hunter found himself spending a lot of time doing grave site recovery after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
He started his company in 2020, repairing over 75 cemeteries across Cameron and Calcasieu Parishes in southwest Louisiana after Hurricanes Laura and Delta. He eventually left his job at the coroner’s office and expanded the company in 2023.
“It’s being able to give families a little bit of peace at the end of the day,” he says, “and so I think that’s what’s really important. It’s a never-ending job.”
Working in a state that’s been so frequently pummeled by hurricanes has made him something of an expert in his field.
“Now that cemetery damage and restoration is such a big deal, people reach out to us from all across the country, whether it’s from hurricanes, flooding events, mudslides,” he says.
Hunter says he’s helped people in Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and even California. One of them was Eva Kenner from Port Charlotte, Florida. She manages Charlotte Harbor Cemetery, the oldest marked cemetery in its county. It was hit by Hurricane Ian in 2022, resulting in 26 fallen trees and close to 100 damaged gravestones.
“I’ve been there 20 years working at the cemetery and we’d never had damaged headstones from a storm before,” Kenner says.
She hired Gulf Coast Forensic Solutions to help repair the cemetery and says the company fixed around 80 headstones in one week — but there’s no getting back those beautiful trees.
“The 26 trees just took away the whole atmosphere. There were great, giant old oaks, hundreds of years old, sun dappled,” she says.
But the repaired headstones have held up, she says, even after other storms have torn through, leaving debris on the ground.
Louisiana's cemetery task force
The flooding that damaged Dalfrey’s family members’ graves in 2016 affected more than 800 graves in 74 cemeteries across Louisiana. After that event, the Louisiana Cemetery Response Task Force was created.
“We are the only state that has that,” says Ryan Seidemann, the task force chairman.
The task force is activated when there has been a disaster declaration and reports of cemetery damage. It is currently activated and has been since Hurricane Ida in 2021.
Seidemann says the task force was created to fill a void in federal assistance for cemetery recovery and because in many storm-prone places, there is no one left taking care of cemeteries.
“A lot of folks have moved away over the years. There really weren’t a lot of people to speak for those descendants who had taken off and floated away with the storm surge,” he says.
Like Hunter’s company, the task force helps find, recover, and identify lost caskets. Reburial can cost thousands of dollars, but family members of the deceased can receive funding for it through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s individual assistance program. Because the process of getting that money can be difficult, especially when people are already dealing with fallout from a disaster in other parts of their lives, the task force also helps people apply for it.
And also like Hunter, the task force gets calls from other states where communities find themselves in need of that kind of cemetery restoration expertise — usually along the Atlantic Coast, but sometimes even in the West.
“Oddly, [requests for help have] come from places such as New Mexico, which you wouldn’t think would have flood problems with cemeteries,” says Seidemann, “but apparently as they’ve had wildfire problems and then rainstorms, the undergrowth that is keeping burials in place there is washing off.”
Preparing for extreme weather
Climate change is exposing how unprepared cemeteries are for extreme weather events says Jennifer Blanks, a PhD candidate at Texas A&M University who studies cemetery preservation and management.
“Climate change is showing that there actually isn’t really a good protocol or procedure to help with those kinds of issues, in terms of mitigating cemeteries from disasters, and how to recover them afterward,” Blanks says.
That is especially true for Black and other minority cemeteries. In her research, Blanks has found that Black cemeteries in Louisiana have more exposure to flood hazards and proximity to hazardous chemical sites.
“Traditionally, Black residents and non-white people are forced to settle on land that is undesirable for different reasons, whether it cannot produce any type of crop or products, or the value of the land is low because it is in a floodplain,” Blanks says.
One of the solutions is to bury caskets underground instead of in the surface vaults that are common in Louisiana. Niblett’s Bluff Cemetery now requires that new burials be underground, though there is some debate over whether graves in New Orleans are mostly above ground due to tradition or due to the high water table.
Having good documentation of who is buried where is also extremely important for recovery. If a casket is dislodged and a deceased person cannot be identified, if their next of kin cannot be contacted, or if that person can’t pay, the casket will not get reburied. Hunter says that in those cases his company just tries to get the casket out of public view.
This is exactly what happened in Charlotte Harbor Cemetery in Florida. It could not get FEMA assistance, and Kenner says that finding and contacting relatives of people who had died so long ago would be an impossible task for a cemetery that was established in 1879.
Even in Louisiana — which started to require identification on caskets after Hurricane Katrina — the lack of documentation is still a challenge, Seidemann says.
“Compliance with that has been spotty at best,” he said.
Blanks said those who manage cemeteries should work with the community to gather local knowledge of graves and consider creating maps.
“It’s one thing to protect the physical landscape,” she says, “but it would also be a disservice to not preserve or recover the cultural heritage that is in the landscape itself.”
This story was produced in collaboration with Science Friday.
