Those
are the words I barked into the phone to the hapless demolition contractor last
Monday morning. It was not quite 9 a.m. The contractor kind of had it coming yet
kind of didn’t deserve it, but I had reached the end of my rope and being
loudly expressive, shall we say, seemed the only way to get him to understand
this.
Many
of you have emailed me asking why I haven’t posted anything in more than a
month. The answer is because not a goddamn thing has happened since the
beginning of the year. Did I mention that this utter lack of any progress
whatsoever has caused me to swear a lot? If you think I’m bad you should hear
my neighbor Alice, who has uttered profanities that I didn’t even know existed.
The
past 2+ months have been such an exercise in red tape, bureaucracy and total
bullshit (oops, there I go again) that trying to write about it, which usually
helps me, in this case only fueled frustration and aggravation that had already
overshot levels I had previously not thought I could reach.
But
since this episode possibly, maybe, perhaps seems to be nearing a close, making
this more of a story than a rant, I will share:
Our
tale begins in mid-December, when my insurance company and Alice's
insurance company authorized the demolition of our houses. To save time and
money we opted to demolish both houses simultaneously, using one contractor.
How we each feel about the demolition of our burned-up homes is complicated and
I’ll write about that some other time, but for the purposes of this episode it
was a good thing as it signaled the first tangible step forward in the long march toward rebuilding.
In
my town at least, you can’t just hire a company and knock down your house or
anyone else’s house just because you want or need to. You need multiple permits
and those permits have an array of prerequisites. First, the homeowner has to
file a request with the utility company to cap the gas lines, a task that in
turn requires the utility company to first obtain a permit from the city before
it can actually do the job. It never occurred to me that the utility company
needed a permit to do this since this is the kind of thing it does all the time
but, well, I got the rationale when I was informed about it. Some of my
neighbors are already pretty pissed off that seven months after the fire these
two scorched and scary-looking houses are still looming over the neighborhood.
I can’t imagine the mood would improve in my favor if the demolition crew
accidentally blew up the joint due to an improperly capped gas line.
That is the first step. Once the utility company gets its permit and does its thing, the demolition company can file its request for a permit. In our case, the city also required that the demolition company submit with its permit request two arborist reports, a dust mitigation plan, an erosion mitigation plan and multiple other documents. All of these things take time and money.
On
December 20, I filed my request for a gas shut-off with the utility company.
After hearing nothing for two weeks I followed up and was given the phone
number of the man in charge of this work. The number had been disconnected so I
called the utility company back and was given a different number. This time the
man answered the phone. Mike was his name and Mike told me nothing had been
done because it was so soon after the holidays. He explained the process, which
basically amounted to confirming the location of the line, filling out some
paperwork and submitting the permit request to the city. There also had to be a
transfer of $1,400 from the utility company to the city. He said it should take
two to three weeks.
Three
weeks later nothing had been done so I called Mike. So did Alice. We were nice,
and tried to explain that since we are already looking at two years of displacement,
every week counts. Mike was nice too and said the utility company should
probably be able to get the paperwork to the city the next week.
A
week went by and nothing happened. I called Mike, as did Alice. Should be done
next week, Mike said. A week went by and nothing happened so we called again.
It had rained, Mike said, and the utility company can’t work in the rain, so
most likely next week. We called the next week. Should be next week, Mike said.
You can see where this is headed. Every week a reassurance, every week nothing
done on the first step of many steps required before the demolition could be
done. Alice and I talked about Mike a lot. How could we motivate him to fill
out that piece of paper, we wondered. And why couldn’t Mike work in the rain?
Unfortunately,
Mike did not spend as much time thinking about us as we did about him, as
despite talking to us every week since the year began, he could only remember
us by our addresses. “Are you number 15 or number 19?” Mike asked me when I called
him for the seventh time in seven weeks.
Now
I have no doubt that Mike would find this description grossly unfair. He is
busy, he has procedures to follow and then there is always that problem he has
with the rain. However from where Alice and I were sitting (often near our
phones, waiting in vain for Mike to call) it was taking more than two months for a piece
of paper to be filled out and delivered to the city. And so our frustration mounted,
and in my case at least, becoming near-rage. Because in the world I live and
work in, it just doesn’t ever need to take that long to do that kind of a task
if someone is working with any sense of urgency or creativity. I certainly don't expect these people to care about my situation but that they seemed equally content taking six weeks or six months to do a job literally made me hyperventilate (and curse).
And
then, two weeks ago, the unthinkable happened. Mike called, he remembered my
name, and told me he had just delivered the permit request to the city. I was
effusive in my thanks and praise to Mike, then hung up and called Alice. We
screamed like schoolgirls at a Jonas Brothers concert. Then we both emailed the
demolition contactor to give him the news, as the demolition contractor had
vowed upon his bulldozer and his children that the very nanosecond after the
utility department delivered its documents he would call the city and do
whatever he could to expedite its approval so he could then submit his own
paperwork. A week later he hadn’t made that call or done anything for that
matter, and that’s why, first thing Monday morning, I dropped F-bombs all over
him him. The city had received the $1,400 for Alice’s house but not for mine,
he said, and since this was the utility company’s issue, not his, there was
nothing he could do except wait. Besides, he said, it was raining. I told him
to call the city, find the right person and ask if he or she would take a
personal check from me. I would eat the cost and figure it out with the utility
company on the back end. I gave him until the end of the day. Lo and behold, he
found the right guy, who said of course he would take my personal check as
collateral while the city waited for the utility company payment. Further, he
would sign the permit and send it to the utility company the minute I brought
the check down to city hall. I did that the following morning, and the city
emailed the permit to Mike a few hours later. The next day I got a
call from Mike, who had heard about my plan, informing me that under no
circumstances would the city ever, ever accept a personal check from me and
we’d just have to wait until the utility company’s finance department found the
missing check or reissued a new one – something he could not help me with in any way whatsoever.
Mike
eventually read his email, then called Alice and me and told us that since he
had the approved permit from the city and the city has its money, the utility
company would cap the gas lines on Wednesday for sure. Unless it rained.