How Do You Make a Mistake Like This?': Homeowners Stunned When They Pull Up to Their Home to Find That 'It's Gone

Lindsay Diaz was startled when her frantic neighbor called her on Tuesday to inform her that their duplex had been demolished by mistake.

Just a week before, Diaz had made the decision to repair her half of the Rowlett, Texas, duplex that had been damaged by a tornado on Dec. 26, according to KERA-TV.

"I was driving home from work and I get a call from my neighbor," Diaz told KERA. "She’s very frantic, crying, and I asked her, 'What’s going on?' She said, 'A company came and demolished the house by mistake.'"

Sure enough, when Diaz arrived at 7601 and 7603 Calypso Drive, she found that the duplex no longer existed.

"How do you make a mistake like this?" Diaz asked, according to WFAA-TV. "I mean, this is just the worst."

A demolition permit for 7601 and 7603 Cousteau Drive — and not 7601 and 7603 Calypso Drive — confirms that Billy L. Nabors Demolition made a terrible mistake when they demolished Diaz's duplex a block over from the intended site, according to WFAA. Although Nabors CEO George Gomez refused to participate in an on-camera interview, he stated that the crew assigned to the demolition project had been under the assumption that they had torn down the correct duplex based on photos from Google Maps that showed the arrow for 7601 and 7603 Cousteau pointing at Diaz and Cutter’s duplex a block away on Calypso. But when the company realized the mistake, they claimed that the entire situation was "not a big deal."

"I think this is a huge deal," Rowlett city manager Brian Funderburk said, according to WFAA.  "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."

Diaz told WFAA that she was waiting to hear back from the insurance carrier before she files a claim against Nabors for the mistaken demolition.

"I feel farther away from moving into a home today than I did after the tornado hit," Diaz said, adding, "We would have been in the house by the end of the summer. And then all of the sudden it’s like the tornado came through again, took everything," according to KERA.

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