It took years for civil servants in Louisiana to restore and backup property records lost during hurricane Katrina. The state suffered a massive setback in October of 2010 when tens of thousands of deeds, liens and other real estate data were lost due to a computer glitch. Since then, real estate transactions have been held up and potentially millions of dollars have been lost by homeowners, real estate developers and investors in New Orleans. The staff at the Orleans Parish Civil District Court aimed to have the property data fully restored by the early part of 2011, and if they keep working at this pace they will meet their goal.
Although the staff is not working from scratch, the task is extremely time consuming. More than 100 workers were asked to work overnight, on weekends and during nationally observed holidays in order to get New Orleans property records back online. In the meantime, title search companies have been helping in a way to verify and locate the lost data. Mortgage companies and lawyers have asked these companies to conduct business as usual, and while deed searches that could be done in hours have lagged on for weeks, the Orleans Parish Civil District Court is almost back to normal.
The Clerk of Court Dale Atkins at Orleans Parish Civil District Court has been organizing efforts to restore the lost data for more than six weeks. While she understands that getting courthouse computer systems back online is important, she also wants to make sure that the property data is correct and will easily be recovered should a similar situation were ever to arise.
