Orleans Parish Clerk's office continues to deal with missing property records

The Orleans Parish Clerk's office is still working to recover missing property and real estate data lost after a computer crash in Orleans Parish Civil District Court.

Clerk of Court Dale Atkins released an update on the progress of recovering the missing data, which has slowed real estate transactions to a crawl.

Atkins said that a total of 58 people – including four from the Jefferson Parish Clerk of Court's office, six from the Orleans Sheriff's office and 44 existing employees in the Orleans Clerk's office – are working to restore the information.

The staff has been commissioned to "work various daily shifts between 7 a.m. and midnight" according to a statement released by Atkins. The recovery team is focusing on "data entry, verification, indexing and cashiering of the backlog of mortgage and conveyance data."

The computer crash in late October caused the loss of real estate data from the late 1980s until present day. Atkins said that most of the records have been recovered but that the indexing system has been completely lost, making it impossible for buyers to access title insurance or a clear title on property required to complete a sale.

Atkins announced that The Windward Group was hired to index missing conveyance data from March 2009 to October 2010. The Clerk's Office is currently negotiating with vendors to index missing mortgage data.