ORANGE, TX -- For the second time in eight years caskets at the historic Hollywood Cemetery in Orange, Texas are on top of the water. It will likely be several more days before the water level drops enough to access the damaged burial plots.
This happened in 2008 during Hurricane Ike. It was an unfortunate sequence of events that one Orange police officer called a "tragic spectacle" of people having to rebury their loved ones.
At Mount Zion Baptist Church the water is gone and the brooms are out.
"I've never seen this type of devastation to this extreme," Pastor C.W. Crawford said.
A half-mile away Hollywood Cemetery remains under water... for the second time. An expensive clean-up awaits on property bought by the church more than 140 years ago.
Aerial video shows burial plots exposed.
History has repeated itself for Robert Tate, who has six family members buried there.
"We need to do everything we possibly can to relocated the remains of loved ones in that area," Tate said.
That could take awhile. The neighborhood around the cemetery remains flooded. City and state vehicles are the only ones allowed on the streets around it. State officials will have to give the okay before family members can go on to the property.
The cemetery is described as "community and volunteer maintained." It will likely take donations to make the clean-up possible.
