Bone-chilling temperatures may have turned the region into the Rock Shiver Valley, but the frozen conditions haven’t prevented bodies from being buried.
That’s because some cemeteries use special heaters that thaw the ground, allowing graves to be dug, said Tim Honquest, owner of Honquest Family Funerals in Roscoe and Loves Park. In frigid weather, cemeteries typically require at least a 48-hour notice before a grave is dug so workers can heat the ground using propane heaters, he said.
Tony Gasparini, owner of Tony Gasparini Funerals in Rockford, said the metal heaters stand about 1 foot high and are the precise dimensions of a grave. These are placed on the gravesite to heat the ground so a casket may be buried in a 6- to 8-foot-deep hole.
“It takes at least a good day to thaw, depending on how deep the frost is,” Honquest said.
At Rockford's Arlington Memorial Park Cemetery, the frost layer currently extends down about 6 to 10 inches, depending on the exact location, said Jim Richardson, the cemetery’s general manager. The snow layer acts as an insulating blanket, preventing the frost layer from going deeper.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a cold snap produced a 2-foot-deep frost layer, Richardson said. Workers would dig half the grave, place the heater back over the hole to thaw more ground, then resume digging.
The heaters, also called frost lifters or burners, are used on pet gravesites at the cemetery, too. Arlington Memorial Park is at 6202 Charles St., Rockford.
"We have a small burner. We set it up just like you would (with) a human (gravesite)," Richardson said. "Especially in the wintertime, they don't want to hold it. I'd say 99 percent of the pets are part of the family and you treat (them) as part of the family."
Ginger Eterno, co-owner and president of Get Covered Inc., doesn’t use heaters to thaw the ground. Eterno, 48, of Loves Park, digs graves the old-school way: by hand, without a backhoe.
She and her father, George Tillett, 73, of Roscoe, use an air hammer with an attached shovel to power through the frozen ground before using picks and shovels to remove layer after layer — or frozen hunk after frozen hunk — of earth from the site.
In subzero temperatures, the time it takes to dig a grave by hand can triple. In sandy soil conditions, it might take two or three hours to dig a grave. But in frigid weather, it might take eight to nine hours with those same soil conditions, she said.
“You dig till it’s dark and you come back and try again,” said Eterno, who is 5 feet tall.
She wears three layers on top and two covering her legs, and nestles hand warmers on the back of her hands between two layers of gloves. They dig down 4 feet, where “it’s warmer inside the hole,” she said.
“In this cold, the sides of the grave do start freezing,” Eterno said, and at times the 18-inch layer of dirt they use to cover the top of the burial vault begins freezing before they can apply it.
Bitterly cold weather moved into the region in late December and has remained here, plunging the area into the deep freeze.
The minus 1 degree high on Jan. 1 made it the coldest New Year’s Day on record in Rockford, according to the National Weather Service. The previous record was 4 degrees in 1974. Friday marked the fourth morning out of five this year with temperatures below zero. By 6 a.m. Friday, it was minus 6 degrees at Chicago Rockford International Airport, but the wind chill made it feel like 19 below, according to the weather service.
Gasparini said extreme cold has never prevented him from burying someone, though.
“There would be an issue with a religious (burial),” Gasparini said of the 48-hour advance notice, noting that Judaism and Islam require burials within 24 hours.
In regions that are colder than northern Illinois, like parts of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, burials cannot be performed during the winter.
"I know up in northern Wisconsin they actually store the caskets in sheds until spring," Gasparini said.
Kristen Zambo: 815-987-1339; kzambo@rrstar.com; @KristenZambo