The spate of closings on Monday brought the total to 1,871 by the close of business Monday, officials said. And 889 more closings were scheduled for Tuesday and today, making it possible for 2,760 homeowners to get their money by the end of February, said Gentry Brann, spokeswoman for ICF International, the contractor running the Road Home.

The program pays owners of flooded homes for their uninsured losses up to $150,000 to repair their home or take a buyout and sell the property to the state.

Energized by the flush of closings, ICF officials said they would be able to ramp up to even more closings in March and April, although Brann warned that the installation of new computer software will slow the process for the first 10 to 14 days of March. Blanco has said the state expects 7,000 closings in March and 10,000 a month thereafter.

The Road Home closing office on Poydras Street in downtown New Orleans was mobbed Tuesday, but officials said the closings went smoothly.

That sentiment was echoed by Eileen Wallen, a real estate agent for Prudential Gardner, who closed Tuesday on the grant for her damaged Uptown home. She called her closing the quickest, most organized closing she'd ever participated in, comparing the experience favorably with the typical house closing in her real estate business.

"There were a bunch of people in there, and I only had 35 minutes' worth in the parking meter, but the lady there said, 'You'll be done.' And I was," Wallen said. "I waited maybe two minutes and from then it was cut-and-dried. I am just speechless. I'm impressed. I'm happy to say they are doing their job, finally."

Wallen was told her mortgage company would have the money in five to seven days, and she went directly to her contractor, giddily telling him she was ready to start rebuilding.

If the closings scheduled for Tuesday and today all take place, there will have been more than 2,300 closings in February alone, following anemic totals of 45 in November, 44 in December and 390 in January. As the bottom line stayed essentially flat, thousands more applications poured in, and the program didn't manage to close 1 percent of about 110,000 cases until last week.

The slow pace led the state Legislature to vote for ICF's ouster, the U.S. Congress to question witnesses and several faith-based community groups to proclaim the Road Home a failure.

Never mind that Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., incorrectly stated last week that none of those who had closed had gotten $150,000 grant awards when, in fact, about 1 in 10 had collected the maximum. All of the negative attention had ICF reeling for months, acknowledged Isabelle Reiff, deputy program manager for ICF International, the company earning up to $756 million to administer the $7.5 billion aid program.

Everyone from the governor on down fed heightened expectations after a mid-December meeting of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, at which Michael Byrne, the man running the Road Home for ICF International, promised 500 closings a day by the end of January. Byrne later recanted, saying it was a misunderstanding and he'd meant that the title company, First American Title Co., would have the capacity to close 500 a day.

In fact, First American had already reported that it had that ability. It finally got the chance to prove it Monday. That gave ICF officials reason to smile, and Reiff said Tuesday morning that enough closings were scheduled in February's two remaining days to get to 2,300.

That total was a goal set as "reasonable" by the Office of Community Development in mid-January, but ICF has not agreed to be held to it or any other goal as contractual benchmarks. The company was supposed to codify performance measurements by Dec. 1, but the state gave it an extension. Reiff said ICF and the state remain in active negotiations over putting some milestones in its contract for delivering certain services to applicants by certain times, and penalties for failure to meet deadlines.

If there aren't at least 2,300 closings by the end of business today, Brann said that won't be ICF's fault. For unknown reasons, when 510 closings were held Monday, 34 other applicants failed to show up for their scheduled closings. Still, there are any number of title clearance issues and calculations that can cause the Road Home program to cancel closings up to a day before they are scheduled to take place.

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