Cemeteries closed until Preservation Group, Selma Funeral Home repair tornado damage

Selma’s Cemetery Preservation Group has their work cut out for them cleaning up the damage to Old Live Oak Cemetery and New Live Oak Cemetery, but they want to serve their neighbors with tornado damage first.  

The Cemetery Preservation group has set up a website listing all the contact information for organizations that provide disaster assistance. “We want to provide one spot where people can go for everything disaster-related,” Group Head Doug Buster said.  

The website is www.disastertoolbox.com.  

As for the cemeteries, Lorenzo Harrison has no damage from this tornado. “Old Live Oak has about five or six big oak trees down and a few markers that are damaged,” Buster said. “New Live Oak has 40% or 50% of the trees down and markers that are knocked over or damaged.” 

Buster said the damage to both cemeteries is not as bad as he would have thought. Selma Funeral Home has contacted the Cemetery Preservation Group and offered to help with clean up and repair. “They are going to help us reset any markers that are knocked over,” Buster said. “If there are any tombstones that are knocked over or out of alignment, the public needs to know they don’t need to hurt themselves trying to fool with them. Let us and Selma Funeral Home do it. They have the equipment, and it is free of charge.” 

During the Sunday afternoon press conference, Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. reported that most of the roads in the cemeteries were cleared, but they were still not safe or usable. Buster agreed. 

“There are a few limbs that are broken off but did not make it to the ground still hanging in some of the trees,” he said. Because of this, burials scheduled for New Live Oak Cemetery have been postponed. He said the work in the cemetery will come a little later, but for now “people just need to stay out of the cemeteries because the Cemetery Preservation Group and Selma Funeral Home will take care of it.”  

Recent work by the Cemetery Preservation Group in the Lorenzo Harrison Cemetery, the only one not touched in this tornado,repaired damage left by a tornado in 1882.