ROCK ISLAND, Ill. — Cleanup efforts are underway at Chippiannock Cemetery in Rock Island after a tornado on April 4, 2023.
Cemeteries are often places for quiet reflection. This is not one of those times.
"You take things like this personally when they happen," said Cemetery Superintendent Jared Vogele as chainsaw noise filled the air Wednesday morning.
After losing about three dozen trees at the two cemeteries Vogele manages, now there is a reflection of a different kind, as volunteers help clean up trees and debris around dozens of grave sites.
"And to each of those families, that's the important thing. It's their emergency," Vogele said. "It's a process that's going to take months to complete."
Fortunately, help is an abundant resource.
"The cemetery means a lot to a lot of folks in the community and the trees mean a lot to people in the community, so naturally we want to help," said Emily Swihart.
Swihart works as a horticulture educator for the University of Illinois Extension based in Milan. She is focused on preserving the trees left standing at the oldest organized cemetery in the City of Rock Island.
"A lot of the trees we lost were the larger, more mature trees," Swihart said. "They've been here for decades. Those don't come back easily or quickly. And so a tree loss is a tree loss."
Liz Gray has a more personal connection to the space she's helping restore. Six members of her husband's family are buried in the area.
"At the end of the day if we're stiff and sore afterwards, I think we'll feel good about what we've done," Gray said.
Vogele acknowledges the work won't be perfect right away, but is working hard to clear as much of the damage as possible before the Memorial Day holiday weekend. He expects cleanup to take anywhere from six months to a year, mostly because of labor shortages.
That's not an issue the cemetery faced after the 2008 storm.
"We had assistance from all over the state and it took about two years to complete everything we had to do," Vogele said. "It’s gonna take us longer because we’re gonna be more reliant on ourselves and whatever assistance we can get from the community here."
The cleanup work is also causing financial strain for the nonprofit cemetery.
"Nobody can budget for something like this happening," Vogele said.
The cemetery has some smaller power equipment to cut up trees. But for larger trees and larger projects, the cemetery will need to bring in contractors with bigger machines, Vogele said.
If you would like to help volunteer with cleanup efforts, or would like to make a donation to the cemetery to help with costs, you can visit the cemetery's website or call the office at (309) 788-6622.