LUZERNE COUNTY, Pa. — In the Forty Fort Cemetery, Mary Ann Weitz and her son Brian Weitz paid their respects at a monument marking a mass grave on the 49th anniversary of Hurricane Agnes.
Buried there are the unknown bodies of those who were flooded out of the cemetery when the Susquehanna River was forced over its banks by Tropical Storm Agnes in June 1972.
Mary Ann remembers seeing those coffins floating through neighborhoods.
“It was horrific. It was really horrific. It unnerved a lot of people, including me. I was only 14,” she recalled. “But that's something that just sticks in my mind even to this day.”
“A lot of those are unearthed caskets or unearthed headstones, pieces of mausoleum,” said Mark Riccatti Jr., with the Luzerne County Historical Society, as he points at pictures taken from that cemetery.
Riccatti says, of all the destruction caused in the Wyoming Valley, what happened to him at the cemetery was jarring.
“You read these really grim but not really exaggerated tales of bodies in caskets floating down Wyoming Avenue,” said Riccatti.
On Carey Avenue in Wilkes-Barre, a marker shows just how high the floodwater got in the city.
Alan K. Stout was five years old when Agnes came through.
He is making a documentary called "Agnes," using footage and pictures from local and national media.
“A lot of the people that actually lived through the flood and saw our film trailer had probably never seen how extensive Agnes was covered on the national stage,” said Stout.
Stout plans to release "Agnes" at the Kirby Theater in Wilkes-Barre next year on June 23, the 50th anniversary of the flood.