City staff are still trying to determine the cause of over-irrigation at a section of Salmon Arm’s Mt. Ida Cemetery that caused more than 20 gravesides to sink as much as three and four feet deep last week.
The issue was reported Wednesday evening, when Debbie Idzan went to visit the grave of her son Tomas on what would have been his birthday. Initially Idzan arrived at the cemetery at 9:30 in the morning, but noticed the sprinklers were turned on, so she was unable to get the gravesite.
“I thought nothing of it, just that I would have to come back later to put out my flowers,” she said. But, to her horror, when she returned at 7 p.m., the water was still spraying and she could see the significant sinkage at the gravesites from the saturated ground.
“It just looks so sad, so disrespectful somehow, all these slumped graves,” she said. “I know people make mistakes, but this is not just some field, this is a place of respect.”
Concerned that the water might be left on all night and do further damage, Idzan called the city.
Rob Hein, the city’s manager of roads and parks, says they are still trying to find out what happened. He says the system was being manually operated at the time.
“Whether it is human error, some malfunction or someone maliciously went in there, we are trying to piece that together, but I think it would be a bit far-fetched to have someone do this deliberately,” said Hein. “I am having discussions with the contractor about this.”
While the cemetery often has issues with graves settling in the springtime due to underground water sources, the addition of so much surface water created a significant problem.
Crews worked quickly to repair the damage, which pleased Idzan.
“I was totally impressed at the speed and quality of the repair work. You can see they took care and real effort in trying to fix things up,” she says.
Hein does not have an estimate on what the repairs will cost.