Judge OKs Rose Hills Plan to Move 140 Graves

A Superior Court judge granted permission Wednesday for Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier to disinter about 140 caskets at risk of being washed down hillsides in the coming rainy season and to rebury them in safer locations in the cemetery.

The decision by Norwalk Superior Court Judge Thomas McKnew will enable Rose Hills to begin unearthing the graves as early as today. Such moves, officials said, will be the first of their kind at what is considered one of the world’s largest single-site cemeteries.

Most of the more than 500,000 graves in the park’s 1,400 acres remain safe, but a recent geological study showed that land has shifted in two small areas in the southeast sections known as the Garden of Commemoration and the Greenwood Gardens.

Rose Hills officials requested legal authority for the disinterments in case they were unable to reach next of kin for permission before the winter rains begin.

According to initial studies, less than an acre is in imminent danger of slides. To be safe, however, the park has cordoned off 13 surrounding acres of graves and stopped any new burials or visits while engineering consultants continue to study those sections.

Geologists drained the area after rains flooded the land during the 1998 El Nino storms, but cemetery officials said the land has remained a concern.

Spokeswoman Sandra Sternberg said officials will take the 140 caskets out of the ground and store them temporarily in the Rose Hills mausoleum until families choose new locations in the cemetery to rebury their loved ones. She said that the families will not face any additional costs.

McKnew ordered Rose Hills officials to accommodate relatives by keeping family plots together in nearby or adjacent areas.

Some families have expressed concern about moving existing graves and others are concerned about empty plots that they have reserved in the affected areas.

Rose Hills lawyer Todd Brookfield said the park will accommodate all those who already own plots by offering them other places in the cemetery.

Sandberg said the park has not yet received the final conclusions of the geological study and would not rule out the need for more moves. “It’s certainly a possibility, [but] one that we hope is not something we have to deal with,” she said.

Rose Hills officials are scheduled to return to Norwalk court Dec. 6 to report on their efforts to contact and accommodate relatives of those who must be moved.

In an interview, Whittier College biology professor Cheryl Swift, who has studied environmental issues in the area, said land slippage in the lower Whittier Hills comes as no surprise.

Swift said that with the Whittier fault so close by, some of the land near the cemetery is known to be unstable, especially when saturated with water.

Swift said the cemetery’s steep slope adds to the problem of slippage, as does its well-maintained lawns. “When you put sod down, you have to water it all the time, and that keeps the land saturated,” which, she said, then leads to greater movement.