Volunteers work to repair damaged cemetery

LEHIGH, Iowa (AP) — Dozens of volunteers are working to repair damage and rebury remains in an old cemetery near Lehigh.

The volunteers have included business owners, prison inmates and dog handlers. A team from K-9 Alliance of Iowa found bones at three different sites last weekend and turned them over to a funeral home until they can be reburied.

The Des Moines Register reports that a section of Oak Grove Cemetery slid into a ravine after heavy rains in 2009, taking coffins, headstones and bodies down the hill with mud and trees. Since then, nothing has been done but as word of the cemetery spread volunteers have been showing up to lend a hand, including digging up graves that are in danger of tumbling down the ravine and stabilizing the ravine wall.