07:49 AM CDT on Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Dave McNamara / WWL-TV Reporter

The city of New Orleans is doubling the number of building inspectors who are checking every house for hurricane and flood damage. The inspections, which are already underway, will determine if houses need to be repaired before they can be lived in again.

WWL-TV

A building inspector puts a red tag on a home that's been declared uninhabitable.

The water still seeping from inside an Iberville street home is a bad sign.

City inspector Eddie Horan said the pipes inside the house are probably broken. Horan is going door to door, checking to see if house are inhabitable or not.

“It's a swamp in there. So it really shouldn't be inhabited until all the mold gets remediated and all the water gets dried out,” Horan said.

A red sticker lets the owner know that repairs have to be made before this house can be lived in.

Twenty-five new building inspectors are being trained at city hall, which will double the workforce that's checking the condition of an estimated 150,000 New Orleans homes.

One new home, built on a slab, got about two feet of water in it. It got a red sticker Monday that it's uninhabitable. Just a few feet away, an older house that's been renovated, the waterline indicates that water did not enter the house. That particular house only had some minor roof damage, and the inspector said this one will be okay.

Centineo said 21,000 New Orleans homes have already been inspected. Almost 700 have been red-tagged.

“It doesn't necessarily mean that the structure will be demolished. So people need not panic when they see that,” Centineo said.

WWL-TV

According to Safety and Permits Director Mike Centineo, the yellow houses on this map of New Orleans have suffered water damage. Meanwhile, the red homes sustained wind damage.

Centineo said he is not aware of any plans for the wholesale demolition of any New Orleans neighborhoods.

Centineo said the key for homeowners is whether a house needs substantial improvement, meaning the repair cost is more than 50% of the home's value. If the damage is substantial, the repaired house must meet the city's latest flood insurance elevations, a figure that varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. That means some rebuilt homes will have to be raised.

“If a house is already up on piers, it's not as expensive. But if you have a slab house, brick veneer, that's probably been around since the 50's or 60's, a ranch-style house, that could cost depending on the size of the house, anywhere from 25 to 40, and maybe even higher, thousand dollars,” Centineo said.

Inspecting every house in the city is a slow process that will probably take another two months to finish. Then thousands of homeowners will have an even more difficult task: deciding whether or not to rebuild; or if the damage, and the cost, makes that impossible.