In what appears to have been a severe case of “a bad day at the office,” a Texas-based demolition firm recently tore down the wrong home, apparently blaming a Google Maps error for the almighty mix-up.
Workers for Billy L. Nabors Demolition were meant to knock down a building at 7601 Cousteau Drive in north-east Dallas on Tuesday, but Google Maps is believed to have pointed the team to a duplex at 7601 Calypso Drive – a block from the correct location.
Lindsay Diaz and Alan Cutter, the owners of the destroyed building, were looking forward to having the premises repaired after a tornado damaged it late last year. But the demolition team has rather scuppered the plan.
According to a report from local news outlet WFAA, Nabors’ CEO said his demolition team thought they were tearing down the correct building, and that the situation was “no big deal.” But try telling that to Lindsay Diaz.
“How do you make a mistake like this? I mean, this is just the worst,” she told WFAA.
City manager Brian Funderburk was equally astonished, saying, “The homeowners were in the process of trying to figure out what it was going to take to repair their home and now they’re looking at rebuilding it instead. I think this is a very big deal.”
After the incident, Nabors, whose company motto happens to be “we could wreck the world,” texted a screenshot from Google Maps showing the arrow for 7601 Cousteau Drive pointing to Diaz and Cutter’s duplex a block away.
The company has so far declined to make any kind of formal apology, though Google Maps has reportedly tweaked its mapping data to ensure the pin now points at the correct location. Bit late for that, though.
It’s not certain how the situation will be resolved, though it’s clearly going to involve a lot of building materials.
