NORTHAMPTON — The damage to gravestones at St. Mary Cemetery that were hit by a motorist last week could amount to $125,000 or more, according to an estimate from Dorsey Memorials of Amherst.

Roy Chapman, the cemetery supervisor, said Thursday it will take months to replace all the ruined stones. Police say 19 stones were damaged or destroyed when Matthew Dulude, 19, of Holyoke lost control of his vehicle while traveling west on Bridge Road after midnight on Saturday.

Dulude has been charged with drunken driving and other moving violations, but no charges related to the cemetery damage have been filed yet.

Chapman said he’s still going through the process of contacting all the families who are affected. The monuments, most of them dating from the 1940s to the 1970s, are the property of the families, and they will have to file claims with the driver’s insurance company.

“Some are scratched, some destroyed,” Chapman said. “They’ll all have to be replaced.”

He said several government markers for veterans were damaged also.

Dorsey Memorials is compiling the damage estimates, but families will have to work with the memorial companies that manufactured the stone, Chapman said. The problem, he said, is that some stones are not made anymore, and some of the companies are no longer in business.

Alice Melnik, a lifelong Northampton resident, said this would be the third stone her family has placed on its plot.

“It’s upsetting that this keeps happening,” she said.

Her mother purchased the plot when her father died many years ago, Melnik said, and she was concerned that the stone would be so close to the road.

“You take the plot that they assign you,” she said. “I remember she would say she was worried about a car hitting the stone.”

The original stone was damaged in a crash that Melnik remembers as being around the same time of year, though she doesn’t remember the year. The stone now bears the names of her father, mother and sister.

Her sister’s husband died during the COVID pandemic, Melnik said, and his name had not been added yet.

She said the cemetery staff think the car hit and dislodged the first stone, nearest the road, which was thrown into her family’s stone, and both stones traveled 10 or 20 feet through the air.

Chris Bailey of Dorsey Memorials, who volunteered Tuesday to help “put everything back together that could be put back together,” said he’s never seen anything like the destruction he saw at St. Mary Cemetery.

The force of the vehicle’s impact sent pieces of monument weighing several hundred pounds flying through the air, he said. Several stones were damaged by flying debris.

“I believe (the driver) was airborne when he hit the first two stones, because he never hit the base,” Bailey said.

He said he’s still working on an estimate for the damages, having just compiled all the details. In one case, he said, the material is not available anymore, and some were made of high-end granite from Rock of Ages in Barre, Vermont.

He estimated damages at between $75,000 and $125,000, “but it could be more.”

Both Chapman and Melnik say they are urging the city to install a metal guardrail along that section of road to prevent further damage by wayward drivers.

But Alan Wolf, chief of staff to Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, said the cemetery, which is owned by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, is not city property and the city has no incentive to install a crash barrier there.

“The asset that needs protecting is not the city’s,” Wolf said.

He said he was not aware if the city had ever been asked to put a guardrail there.

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