Abuse is abundant
As the self-inspections continued, problems started showing up. Menick says that some homeowners have found that they couldn't get their electricity turned on after submitting self-inspection affidavits. It turned out the "electrical contractors" who signed them weren't electrical contractors at all—and they were nowhere to be found, either. Those homeowners will have to pay again to get their houses rewired.
Chief Electrical Inspector Chan says recent quality-control checks of self-inspections revealed an alarming percentage of poor work "We've done 53 quality-control checks of these self-inspections, and only two jobs passed with no problems," says Chan. "Twenty-one of the jobs had to be redone because of major code violations—a lot of them life-threatening."
Chan says he's had to suspend some contractors' licenses and put others on probation. "Some of these contractors are storm chasers. Others are just people getting greedy."
Under pressure and understaffed
The Electrical Inspection Department is losing the battle to keep up with demand. In a typical year, the department handles about 11,000 permit requests with a staff of 10 inspectors. So far this year, the department has received more than 33,000 permit requests. However, the staff is down to Chan and two other inspectors—and one of those is considering a job in Nevada. Without Canzoneri's team, the city's inspection staff could be in real trouble.
That trouble is on the horizon. The first of thousands of lump-sum checks for as much as $150,000 have been mailed to homeowners who applied for rebuilding grants, says Chan. The expected result is thousands of additional requests for inspections.
Canzoneri fears that the situation is likely to get worse—and not just because of the increasing workload for his employees. Like Fire Inspector Mason, he worries that eventually there will be electrical fires—and someone could die in one caused by shoddy repair and self-inspection.
"It hasn't happened yet, but it could. And if it does, all associated parties should bear the responsibility, he says. "Sure, you want to encourage people to come back, but they need to come back to a safe place."
Richard Wall spent a week this summer gutting flooded houses in the New Orleans area. He saw a lot of flooded wiring still in place.
