"My niece's college fund" An excavator rips into a New Orleans home as it is being wetted down to minimize a dust-up during a home demolition. LA-RFO Photo. Back to Features

Demolish or rebuild? Process, victims say, will ‘wear you out’
By Dave Harris, Public Affairs, Louisiana Recovery Field Office

The power shovel ripped, pulled and smashed. What looked like a sturdy New Orleans brick home buckled and shook with every blow, the excavator making short work of finishing a demolition that Katrina started 15 months ago.

Randy and Marietta, dressed in neat office casual apparel, watched as heavy machinery leveled their once peaceful home. Men dressed in plastic and breathing through gas masks sorted through potentially hazardous household material, including white goods (leaky refrigerators) and asbestos. They took extra care to make sure to cap the gas line.

Almost like the compressed span of time-lapse photography, Randy and Marietta watched as the demolition crew felled eaves and crumbled concrete slabs with the ease of King Kong, turning the family home into a mountain of rubble before it is hauled off.

For the owners, the process of learning, deciding and conferring took more than a year, too long to get to "go"—a full knapsack of variables—a review process bound and determined to check and double-check ownership and right of entry.

"This was my nieces’ college fund," Marietta said of the property. The couple, both engineers, had purchased another home in Kenner.

Leading up to demolition, Marietta said she was on the phone every day. "I documented an average of nine calls a day," she said, referring to a satchel of private and public contacts. Ultimately, the insurance company paid off the mortgage, but little to nothing more. Other than the demolition itself, she and Randy moved forward, needing no government help.

Could the demolition happen sooner than 14 months?Yes, perhaps as soon as three to five months. The key is for the owner to complete a right-of-entry—ROE—form as soon as possible. Review is ongoing as agencies refine the process. But reasons for added days and weeks vary as much as why home buyers choose a particular style or neighborhood.

At first, an evacuee is overwhelmed. Some haven’t come back to face the challenges. Some may never return. Squabbling with insurance companies, hoping for new government relief, job-hunting, lacking knowledge on how to go about the whole process, finding missing documents, clearing titles, encountering bumps in the road to understanding regarding how to access or fill out the paperwork or having trouble deciding whether to relocate or rebuild.

Some await financial help from the state’s Road Home program in which homeowners of every income level suffering substantial property damage may be eligible for up to $150,000 in financial assistance.

Once the owner decides on demolition, the long and the short of it is that the process has taken up to five months for multi-jurisdiction reviewers and inspectors, property researchers, historic preservation actions and reviews, rechecking by the Demolition Support Group and ultimately to the Corps of Engineers for up to 21 closing days.

Up until the last minute, owners can change their minds, potentially further delaying the work.

When Katrina hit, Corps employee Michael Patrick worked for the Corps’ New Orleans District. He now works 12-hour days with the Corps’ Louisiana Recovery Field Office as the Environmental Subject Matter Expert.

Michael decided not to demolish his house, but he said the arduous process of rebuilding "will wear you out." Meanwhile, he lives in a hard-won FEMA trailer on his property.

He said everything below the waterline must be replaced, but wiring and pipes above the waterline are old and out of code, making it prudent to replace both throughout the house. Besides, he said, "it’s Catch-22; they won’t put a new meter in my house until the house is replumbed."

Michael, single, told of indecision he experienced. Even before Katrina he thought of moving closer to his siblings in Chattanooga and Cleveland. But he slowly moves his rebuilding project forward while his 72-hour-a-week job helping people in similar circumstances keeps him busy and "puts my mind elsewhere."

Michael himself, focusing on his project only on a Sunday, said he became frustrated with poor communication following the storm, spreading mold, termite damage, subsequent water intrusion from Rita because of roof damage inflicted by Katrina, home-improvement rip-off contractors, skyrocketing cost of living and escalating estimates to raise the elevation of his home, no-show workers or inspectors and "if it hadn’t been for my work with the Corps, I wouldn’t know whom to contact."

Despite it all, he said, "I’m in a better position than many of my fellow New Orleanians." He said during his weeks as an evacuee, the Corps continued to pay his salary under the Safe Haven program and provided additional support upon his return.

As some rebuild or demolish and others have yet to decide, no one knows when life will get back to normal in New Orleans. Yet, progress will continue as homeowners push and agencies pull and residents complete their ROE with the city at the earliest opportunity, all of which results in producing a synergy from lessons learned that homeowners and workers hope will ultimately refine and smooth some of the wrinkles and kinks.