Mountain View Cemetery wrecked by winter storms

POCATELLO, Idaho (KIFI) - Walking through the Mountain View Cemetery on Tuesday, trees and branches are everywhere and scattered through the complex.

They were blocking headstones, road paths, and even the fence that surrounds it.

"It's definitely a mess right now," said Parks and Recreation Director Anne Butler. "That was a pretty heavy storm we got this weekend and it took down a lot of the tree canopy and the cemetery. So it's going to probably take weeks for us to clean that up and we're working on it as quickly as we can. But we'd really urge the public really just to kind of stay out of there if they can."

Butler says all of fallen trees and branches were due to the storm and their biggest priority right now is to keep the public safe.

"At this point, we really need to make sure that we get the limbs that are high in the air that are broken down to make sure it's safe for everybody," Butler said. "Once we start chopping those up, then the community could come in and haul that away for firewood or whatever they need. But right now, we're not taking volunteers while we assess the damage."

Butler says they had been planning to do some work on the area, but then mother nature had other plans.

"It's something that we've been working on is to kind of clean up that tree canopy, but this storm kind of took care of that for us," Butler said.

Butler says with the winter storm redirecting her department to work on multiple things, the city is trying their best to do the cleanup in a timely fashion.

"It's important to us," Butler said. "It's really a matter of manpower at this point. We've had three different crews out there on Tuesday and we'll make a quick work of it as we can. But we know it's going to be a long process."