Perhaps every cemetery should have these sort of signs
throughout the property. Perhaps also something should be done to prevent
headstones and monuments from falling. The sign is offered by the state board
charged with identifying and preserving Oregon's historic cemeteries.
The safety signs are intended to warn visitors that historic
gravestones can be unstable. If the heavy stone monoliths fall, injuries or
even deaths can occur, the Oregon Commission on Historic Cemeteries said.
"The Commission tries to focus on practical services and programs for
historic cemeteries." noted Commissioner Dirk Siedlecki. "This simple
sign will remind people to use caution both for safety and for preservation of
the markers."
Signage is important, obviously, but is simply the first
step toward a lasting solution. I got to thinking about how to rile up the public
enough so that money would be spent shoring up our cemetery monuments so they
wouldn’t fall on people and kill them. Normally, if enough people die,
something gets done. However, no one seems to be jumping up and down about the
safety issues in our cemeteries. Maybe Ralph Nader needs to get involved.
 |
| 1971 - "Danger in Our Hospitals" |
Mr. Nader, as some of my readers may recall, is the famous
consumer advocate who published the book,
Unsafe at Any Speed, in 1965, which
was a critique of the safety record of American automobiles and their
manufacturers.
Oddly, I owe my livelihood to Ralph Nader. Currently I am a
Clinical Engineer in an academic medical center in Philadelphia, but I began my
career as a “Biomedical Equipment Technician.” This job classification was a
direct result of something that Nader brought to the public’s attention. One of
Nader’s alarming consumer alerts was published in the March 1971 edition of the
highly-respected technical magazine,
Ladies' Home Journal. To this I owe my
livelihood. The issue carried the article, "
Ralph Nader's Most Shocking
Expose," in which he claimed, "
At least 1,200 people a year are
electrocuted and many more are killed or injured in needless electrical
accidents in hospitals."(
Ref.)
Who knows how many people were actually being accidentally electrocuted
in U.S. hospitals, but it was a big enough scare that it birthed an entire new
career, that of the “Biomedical Equipment Technician.” This person’s role was
to keep all the electrical devices (everything from infusion pumps to heart
monitors) safe for staff, visitors, and patients in U.S. hospitals. These technicians,
who were usually electricians or electronics technicians, were not specifically
trained for this new role– colleges and universities had no biomedical
electronics degree programs at the time. The people hired for this technical role
in hospitals were concerned primarily with keeping the existing inventory of
equipment safe (for example, ensuring that every electrical device had a
three-prong power plug to keep the chassis grounded). They were not initially
involved in the design and manufacture of those devices, only in the ongoing
safe use and maintenance of them.
 |
| A fallen, thousand-pound headstone |
See the analogy to the falling headstones yet? To warn
unsuspecting citizens of the potential hazards in cemeteries is one thing, but
shoring up the monuments and headstones to ensure stability should be the next
step. Not only that, but the manufacturers of these grave markers should be
required to design them with a greater emphasis on safety. As I said in the “
Man
Killed by Falling Headstone” blog, our forefathers may not have expected that
the ground would shift, that vandals would push headstones off their bases, or
that earth tremors would happen – but
we know that
now! So why would we
not
secure new monuments with new technologies? One of the more obvious techniques
- pinning headstones to their bases with metal rods - has proven to not be a viable long-term
solution, for reasons that my Facebook Friend,
David Gurmai
points out:
 |
| Pin holes in the base of a fallen marble headstone |
”The metal pin method causes the stones to degrade sooner.
Metal expands/contracts faster than rock (cracking the stone), plus moisture
still seeps in at the joint and corrodes the metal. You can tell the pinned
stones in a cemetery immediately because their joints are rust stained and they
are all cracking/cracked where the pins are. It only takes a few decades for
the damage to begin showing.
In the late 19th century they "restored" the
Parthenon with the metal pin method. By the 1960's (when the current conservation/restoration
effort began) it was in worse condition than if they had done nothing at all."
It turns out that if the 1898 restoration effort had followed the method of the ancient Greeks, the Parthenon project might have been successful. Read more about that
here.
So, can our cemeteries be made safer? Of course. All it
takes is money, research, and perhaps, Ralph Nader. After all, Nader got the
entire country so scared with his hospital electrocutions article that the
problem was solved in ten years’ time. It all began with a bit of
sensationalism – the opening line in Nader’s Ladies' Home Journal article was, “Too
many hospitals are hazardous electrical horror chambers, says America’s leading
safety crusader.” In the period between 1971 and 1981, the biomedical
technicians (and later, biomedical engineers) along with hospital
administrators, demanded safer designs from the manufacturers of electrical and
electronic medical equipment. Eventually, medical products became very safe and
therefore presented little of no risk to the patient or user.
 |
| A fallen, thousand-pound stone that nearly claimed a woman's leg. |
The thousand-pound headstone pictured above nearly claimed a woman's leg when it fell on her. Unprovoked, it simply fell over as she walked by. Notice the off-level base. It took six men to lever the stone off her leg. Luckily, the ground was soft and gave a bit, so she did not lose her leg. She has internal pins keeping it together. I witnessed this calamity. You only have to see such a thing once to become a believer in cemetery safety.
So while it pays to be cautious around cemetery monuments, perhaps the monument manufacturers and stone carvers can
incorporate new (or even ancient Greek) safety methods in their future designs. The Greeks used iron clamps to hold the Parthenon marble pieces together, but sealed the joints against moisture with molten lead. Molten lead being rather toxic, maybe non-metallic rods can be used to hold
headstones to their bases? As an analogy, automobile manufacturers not only strive to make
vehicles pleasing to the eye, but they also constantly improve the safety of
the vehicles. True, certain aspects of this industry are government-regulated,
but hey, if that’s what it takes to design safer cemeteries, so be it. Now if you will excuse me, I must go and see if
Ladies' Home Journal is still in publication ...
References and Further Reading:
Read the entire article
here: Nader, Ralph (March 1971). "
Ralph Nader's Most Shocking
Expose;"
Ladies Home Journal 3: 176–179.
