Albany hopes to update a majority of structures years after Hurricane Michael

ALBANY, Ga. (WALB) - The City of Albany wants to know how much damage is still left over from Hurricane Michael.

The Department of Planning and Development Services has hired a contractor to survey each piece of land in the city to provide a detailed look at some of the leftover damage.

The department is working with iVueit, which hires local people or “vuers” to go out and complete the survey using their smartphones. It will start on Monday.

Paul Forgey is the director of planning and development services.

“They are going out and they’re looking at every single parcel whether it has a structure on it or not,” he said. “They’re going to rate the condition of it. They’re also going to look at whether the condition is related to storm damage. But that’s a special category that’s they’ll also be looking at.”

But first, there are some prerequisites.

“They’ll have a little bit of training to be able to determine if it’s storm damage or it’s just lack of maintenance,” Forgey said. “But things were looking for are obvious like a tree that is still on a roof or a tarp that’s still on a roof.”

Forgey said while many repairs were done after Hurricane Michael, there is still some damage left over years later.

“Twenty or 30% might still be unrepaired. That’s just a guess,” Forgey said. “We want to be able to look at Albany completely. Every single structure, every single parcel and know is it 5% that’s still unrepaired or is it 60%? Because it’s really just a guess until we know.”

Ward 4 City Commissioner Chad Warbington said this ties into something bigger.

“They will also take pictures, photographs of properties. And then at the very end, they’ll create a database that really will be accessible to the public where individuals or investors can pull up a particular address or property and see what the condition of the property is, and you know, see photographs,” Warbington said.

Warbington said he hopes this initiative will ultimately help to boost Albany’s real estate and the city as a whole.

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