Georgia Contractor Using GPS Coordinates, Not Street Address, Demolishes Wrong House
“CARROLLTON, Ga. — Turns out GPS isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
A crew using coordinates from a global positioning system demolished a 60-year-old home in Carrollton earlier this week, but it was the wrong house. The home’s owner, Al Byrd of Atlanta, said he heard about the mistake when a neighbor called him to tell him the house he grew up in — along with his family heirlooms — had been destroyed and thrown into Dumpsters.
No one was living in the house at the time.
Byrd said his father built the house by hand in 1950.
Byrd said he is talking with an attorney but hasn’t made any decisions on what to do. He said he’s gotten an apology from the companies who made the mistake.”
Oops.
Replies
Thats strange I drove by a house I worked on a couple of summers ago and it was for sale but the house next to it was just being completed back then.
So when I drove by today that house is completely gone just one section of driveway left.
It was at least 6000 sq ft brick with drive thru portico to a detached garage that was at least another 3000 sq ft.
My best guess estimate was it was at least a 1.5 million dollar place.
Just plain freaky that it is completely gone.
ANDYSZ2
WHY DO I HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY THAT BEING A SOLE PROPRIETOR IS A REAL JOB?
REMODELER/PUNCHOUT SPECIALIST
Heirlooms got dozed as well.
more from the local
pictures: http://projects.ajc.com/gallery/view/metro/carroll-demolished-house/
article below from http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2009/06/11/wrong_house_demolished.html
To Al Byrd and his family, the house contained 2,200 square feet of memories.
His father, Raymond, had built the brick-and-concrete home in 1950 with his bare hands.
Al Byrd of Sandy Springs got a phone call Monday telling him that his family home in Carroll County had been torn down. The steps remain.
The three bedroom house was on a little road bearing Al Byrd’s family’s name.
Now, all that’s left of the house are those memories — and a pile of questions — after the Carroll County home was mistakenly reduced to rubble Monday afternoon.
“It’s incredulous,” said a still-shocked Byrd, a retired Xerox executive who lives in Atlanta. “It’s not about money. This is about family.”
The man who did the yard work at the home, which no one was living in, called Byrd late Monday with the news. Byrd immediately hopped on I-20 and called the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department. He turned onto Byrd Trail — named for his family — in disbelief. Even the mailbox was no longer standing..
“Why did you knock this house down?” Byrd said he asked members of a Marietta demolition company Tuesday morning.
Byrd said a representative of North Georgia Container told him the company was hired by another company, Southern Environmental Services, to raze the home. And that company was hired by Fore Star Property, according to the sheriff’s department report.
None of the three companies responded to messages left Thursday afternoon.
Byrd was told paperwork and GPS coordinates led the demolition crew to 11 Byrd Trail. He said no company ever contacted him before leveling the house.
“If we were going to get rid of it, we would have done it after my father died in 1998,” Byrd said.
He suspects a house on the opposite side of railroad tracks was the intended target of demolition. It’s a wooden home with a green roof — substantially different than his three-bedroom family home.
Vernice Parham, who has lived on the street with two of her six sisters for more than 40 years, was home when the demolition began. “It hurt my heart,” she said. “I wasn’t raised up in it , but I was raised up near it,” Parham said. “I know we got a heavenly home. But we’ve got a Earthly home there.”
Byrd has hired a lawyer, but he isn’t sure what his next step will be yet. His only daughter is getting married on Saturday, and he doesn’t want to be distracted for the big event.
“I’m trying to compartmentalize this,” Byrd said Thursday afternoon. “I don’t want to put a pall on the wedding.”
Charlsie Otieno, 60, Al Byrd’s youngest sister, fondly remembers learning her ABCs on the back porch. It was one of the few structures left standing. “This is like a death. It really is.”
Not as serious, but down the street from me their was a home built in the 30's and they owned 2 lots.A few years ago the house and lot where sold seperately. And when a house was built on that lot it got the street number that the old house was using. The house numbering system are different than most places. For historic reason they based on the lot number and not odd/even like most. And the other odd thing was the lot that the old house was built on was out of sequence with all of the other ones. Apparently after the land was platted and the lake filled their found that there was place for another lot.So the dead on the old house listed lot and block and commonly know as ### street number. But that number no longer matched that house. A couple of years later the old house got foreclosed and the owners of the new home can home and found notices on the door and the locks drilled out and changed..
William the Geezer, the sequel to Billy the Kid - Shoe
at least they had a chance of getting things straightened out legal wise. Not sure what I'd do if I was that family with the smashed house & heirlooms.
You'd think there would be a better verification process. But something still doesn't add up. They had to input an address into their GPS. Then the GPS takes them to it, even if the GPS is locating the house number differently than what is real (often happens) they still had a mailbox (that got razed too) to verify the physical address/house number. I think the demo companies are going to be in a world of hurt for this one.
Several years ago in San Gabriel a house was razed while the owners were on vacation. Turns out the house wreckers had the right address but they were on the wrong street one block over from the condemned house.You'd think when they found it furnished they'd have asked some questions before knocking it down.
BruceT