Bad GPS coordinates sent demolition crew to wrong house

Last weekend a neighbor down the street stopped by to use my phone to report her own phone outage. And when the service man arrived he phoned me to tell me that there was no house at the address we had given them. Oops, he had turned down the wrong street. He was staring at the vacant lot created when a house had been removed and written about on these pages. (See: Don't like your house? Move it out.)

Within about 20 minutes the neighbor called to report that the phone was back online. And we joked that it was a good thing this wasn't a demolition crew that ended up at the wrong house.

Well, lo and behold, that actually did happen to a house in Carroll County, Georgia. The owner lived in Atlanta, and he received a call from the yard man telling him his old family homestead was gone. According to the news story, the owner said the demolition crew relied on paperwork and GPS coordinates. But someone somewhere got something badly wrong. Here are the news links: Homeowner Says Crews Demolished Wrong House and Wrong house demolished, heirlooms lost in Carroll.

We don't have enough information to know what it was that sent the demolition team there, but damage was certainly done. And it's a mistake everyone would hope doesn't happen again anytime soon. Was it a bad GPS? The one in my car signals arrival when I'm about a block away from my destination, and the street numbers are way out of whack too, so maybe the one they used is equally flawed.

Along those lines, the City of Midland has a very proficient GIS department, and I've been told that one GPS manufacturer uses the city information to update that company's map database. So not all GPSes are on equal footing.

Schneier.com originally wrote about this incident and lamented the lack of incentives for people to authenticate sloppy or easily forged paperwork. But the civil justice system provides a very good incentive, and the demolition company's liability insurer, once they've paid a bundle for all of those priceless heirlooms, will surely be requiring some very stringent safeguards for any future demolition.

Comments

[Melissa]

This should have tipped you off, your speed trap route could have been avoided by looking at an old paper map. :)