Cemetery near Owensville among hardest hit spots by Gibson County tornado Tuesday

GIBSON COUNTY, Ind. — Flowers, Matchbox cars and other remembrance items left on some of the graves at Maumee Cemetery sat unscathed Wednesday afternoon, while just rows over headstones were snapped from their bases.

It was a visual representation of the nature of Tuesday's storms, remnants of Hurricane Beryl, which bounced from community to community, either leaving damaged buildings and downed trees or no damage at all in their wake.

Maumee Cemetery is about four miles west of Owensville, Indiana, in the unincorporated town of Johnson. Gibson County remained mostly unscathed by the tornadic activity, aside from Johnson, which got hit as the storms swept north from Posey County.

Gibson County Sheriff Bruce Vanoven said the majority of calls his department received were for trees down in the roadways. There was only one injury reported, and it was not life threatening.

"Other than that we have had several trees down, damage to a lot of houses, and a few trailers were completely destroyed in the Johnson area," he said.

Gibson County Commission President Warren Fleetwood said county officials met with Homeland Security and Emergency Management representatives Wednesday morning to look at the path the storm took.

Fleetwood had only heard of a few families displaced due to damage, and said clothing, housing and food resources were being planned for those who were impacted.

With trees blocking roadways and downed lines, Johnson roadways were more gummed up than normal, and flaggers were out on Indiana 165, the main road through town, keeping it to one lane.

Yet individuals and families found their way to Maumee Cemetery to check in on their loved ones. One of them wase Frances Wilson, a Princeton, Indiana, resident whose son called her despite currently being out of town, to let her know he had heard there was damage to the area.

Wilson found the graves she was looking for undamaged, but she took the time to look around the cemetery, noting some graves would only need a bit of cleaning.

"I would say very few stones are going to be completely ruined," she said.

Wilson said just a couple years ago the cemetery had a lot more trees than it does now, ones that likely would have been felled in the area of her loved ones' graves if they hadn't already been removed.

Looking at a gravesite near a fallen tree, Wilson said it looked like it would just need to be swept off. But then she saw the headstone and been fully split from the base. But still she was positive.

"But see it's ok, it's ok," she said. "That's an easy fix."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Cemetery near Owensville among hardest hit spots by Gibson County tornado Tuesday