Hurricane Irma uprooted two dozen trees and a casket at a cemetery in Largo.
- Casket unearthed when tree uprooted
- Tree's roots grew around casket
- Machinery needed to extricated casket from roots
"When we came here, it was like a battle zone," Chapel Hill Memorial Park Chairman Doug Negretti said.
The casket in question is entangled in the roots of a giant eucalyptus tree that Negretti estimates to be at least 100 years old. Negretti said over the years, the tree’s roots grew around the casket, so when it toppled, the casket went with it.
Negretti said getting the casket down without doing any more damage is going to be a difficult process. Each root will have to be cut one at a time, a process that could take up to eight hours.
"We're going to bring a forklift in,” Negretti said. “We're going to bring in a backhoe and a crane to counter balance everything and cut just piece by piece."
Negretti is hoping to have that machinery on site in the next week or two.
“We want to do it correctly, that's why we're not rushing,” Negretti said. “Because that's somebody's loved one.”
Cemetery officials are still going through their records to determine to whom the grave site belongs.