Panama City making safety assessments of buildings

Nov. 13--PANAMA CITY -- To best address the city's housing crisis post Hurricane Michael, Mark McQueen needs to know the scope of the problem first.

As such, the city manager has enlisted EPCI Code Administration Services, the local company that provides building department services for the city, to conduct safety inspections of all homes and businesses. The idea is not to evict any residents, but quantify the level of damage so the city can create the best plan to address it, McQueen says.

"We've got to find affordable housing, but I don't know what the scope of the problem is ... everybody thinks they know, but there's no data to support it," McQueen said. "We're doing this so we can formulate a better plan to help our citizens have better homes ... to determine better solutions that we need to be developing."

Over the last two weeks, EPCI has surveyed about 15 percent of the city and issued green, yellow or red stickers to homes and businesses, based on their level of damage. Green indicates a building is fine, while yellow stickers are for structures that are damaged but habitable. Red stickers are for buildings that are possibly uninhabitable, but need a professional to determine if they're safe for use.

Bo Creel, president of EPCI, said no buildings are being condemned and residents are not being evicted as part of the survey. The purpose of the work is simply to gather information.

"We're looking at the exterior of structures to determine if there's any roof damage or if there is electrical safety issues or health threats to anybody," Creel said.

Creel said that of the buildings surveyed to date, 962 or about 50 percent of them have received red stickers. However, Creel noted that some of those red stickers were left because the homeowner wasn't there and the inspector couldn't complete the survey. Those inspections will be completed at a later date, Creel said.

McQueen said he wanted all the data possible to show the state and Federal Emergency Agency the true scope of damage.

"We're helping determine what the level of devastation is so we can tap into the state and FEMA to help with the problem," McQueen said. "I want to make sure we have the data so we can go after all available resources."

Creel said his company plans to speed up the inspection process by bringing in about 50 more outside inspectors, including architects, engineers and insurance adjusters.

"We want to be finished in the next 30 to 45 days," he said.

Creel said that so far, most of the damage the company has seen has been from trees and debris that have fallen on buildings.

"Where I'm really shocked is Panama City itself ... the amount of debris that's got to be cleaned up and the length of time it's going to take ... it's hard to imagine," Creel said.

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