What happens when the house is “a wreck” - literally?
It’s a statement my mother would say: “This house is a wreck!” That usually meant my sister and I needed to pick up our bedroom and make sure none of our personal belongings were scattered around i
n other parts of the house. Mom could easily be appeased with maybe an hour’s worth of work.
There is no appeasing a family in Georgia, whose home was “wrecked” without their knowledge. Al Byrd of Atlanta received a phone call advising him that the three-bedroom home his father built by hand in Carrollton had gone the way of the wrecking ball. Al was upset and bewildered by this news.
Southern Environmental Services, based outside of Atlanta, was hired by a realty company to demolish a vacant house on the opposite side of the street from the Byrd home. A representative of Southern Environmental said the demolition crew was given GPS coordinates, rather than a street address, for the residence that needed to be dismantled. The realty company, Forestar Group Inc., says it gave Southern Environmental both color photos and an address that would identify the house.
Al’s father built the house in 1950. At the time of the destruction, no one was actually living in the house; however the house was furnished and held many family heirlooms. Al’s mother’s dishes, china cabinet and dining room table were all still in the house. There were also plans for the house to be used for an upcoming family reunion.
Upon seeing the house for the first time, Al remarked, “It was disbelief. It was like a mirage.” Wanting to get to the bottom of why this happened, he has hired a lawyer to help him try to “connect the dots.”
It seems clear that GPS coordinates cannot be the only information used in an irreversible action such as this. Perhaps using Google maps Street View could have supplied the “bread crumbs” needed to reach the right home.
Posted by Sharon Walker
