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Wrecking Crew Demolishes Wrong Housing Duplex Following Google Maps Error (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A demolition company has leveled the wrong housing duplex after one of its employees was misled by a Google Maps error. Instead of bringing down a house destroyed by a tornado in Rowlett, Texas at 7601 Cousteau Drive, the wrecking crew demolished another home at 7601 and 7603 Calypso Drive, a block away. Owners of the second house were waiting for their house to be repaired, since it didn't suffer major damages in the tornado. The demolition company's CEO dismissed the incident as "not a big deal." The wrecking crew used Google Maps to find the house to demolish because they were brought in from a neighboring town, but failed to double-check with a neighbor before starting their work. A Google engineer confirmed that Google Maps was showing the wrong information.
Seems like you should be using official zoning maps from the city for something like this...
This is not the first time this has happened.
I think by law, that whenever this happens, the company 's owner should have their house destroyed - along with all of their personal photos, keepsakes and see if they think it is a big deal.
Basic rule should be an estimate value of the house x 3 - if they don't sue. x 6 if you have to sue. Because emotional losses are far bigger than the physical ones.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If you read the article, it has a link to the demolition company's web site. The site still has contact information on it, along with the hideously juicy slogan, "We could wreck the world," which they did for these unfortunate folks.
You think contractors demoing the wrong house is bad? There's been many cases where people have gone in for surgery and they've removed or operated on the wrong limb!! Crazy!
I work at a place that distributes medical supplies and one of the things we sell is 'skin markers', just small markers to write things like "THIS ARM" on patients before operations. It was such a problem that they actually had to come up with a solution for it to stop happening!
A couple years back the wife and I were driving in NV, from Topaz Lake to Hawthorne, over a very dirt-track-across-the-desert, scraped every couple years (but still an official state route), road.
As we approached Hawthorne, going through a pass in a range of hills, the nav system told us to turn left about a mile early and take a little road that went a couple car lengths and then off a cliff, maybe a couple hundred feet high.
Seems there had been an old road there, back in the pony-express days, which had gone away nn a landslide long ago. We're guessing the USGS still showed it, the map company had included it in their database, and the nav system had computed it could save us a couple tenths of a mile by taking the shortcut.
Fortunately we are aware of such pathologies, especially in remote areas, and were on the alert for it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way