[StBernard] steve estopinal

[Westley Annis]

Sometimes things just never go right, and once in awhile the timing is
magical. I went into the Parish planning commission today and who walked in
right after me but none other than surveyor/engineer Steve Estopinal!  The
email address I had for him was invalid and I wondered all day how I was
going to find him.
 
Steve said he has over 26,000 digital files of slab elevations/plot plans,
etc. , although 5,000 were lost in the flood, including some very historical
drawings from the 1800's.  
 
Steve works for a Baton Rouge architecture/engineering firm, but said I
could let everyone know how to reach him.
 
Email sestopinal at csrsonline.com. He'll need the address of the property in
question. I suppose the subdivision name helps, too, if you know it.  He can
discuss arrangements for his services to research and get the information to
you if it is in his files. It can be emailed since its digital.
 
Good luck and hope you are all one of the 26,000. Keep in mind that land
settles and so do slabs, and the benchmark elevation has changed over the
years. What this means is that if you had a new survey done today, the slab
elevation will be lower than when the house was built and first surveyed.
Maybe it's an inch, maybe it's six inches difference. No way to tell unless
it was re-surveyed. But for the most part, you'll have an excellent idea of
where your slab is (was) relative to the Base Flood Elevations that FEMA
talks about. I wonder how much the weight of 12 feet of water cause us to
settle. That's like having 750 pounds on every square foot of land! And it
sat there awhile, too.
 
Looking forward to tomorrow's FEMA meeting on Base Flood Elevations and hope
it's productive and informative. Can you put FEMA, productive, informative
in the same sentence? (I couldn't resist)
 
Deborah Keller