Used Cars

[KHornet]

Saw a google article on the huge number of cars destroyed by Harvey's downpore! Believe that number was estimated to be above a million, after the flooding ceases. The price of used cars is high already, but you can bet it will shoot thru the roof after this. The car business will be booming in Texas and La. for the next 6 months.

Paul

 

[RicinYakima]

Yep, after Katrina every car hauling in the country was busy for six months. They were lines of them up here unloading flood damaged cars to sell to suckers. It will not be the time to buy a used car!

 

[Ian]

Dealt with hundreds of them, a true nightmare. You can always tell a flood car because of rust on the unpainted parts under the seats and dash.

 

[fiver]

I was watching some yo-yo on the tv try to drive his truck around a flooded suv of the same make.
now you could see where the road dipped down, you could clearly judge the water depth by looking at the road signs barely sticking up out of it, and the other vehicle sitting there with water rushing over the hood should have also been a clue.
it was like waiting,,,,, waiting,,,, waiting, aaaand there it is. [here is your sign]
now here comes the boat to get him, a boat that should have been looking for people trapped somewhere else.
remind me not to buy a newer black chevy 4 door pick-up any time soon.


I'm astounded at some of the things I'm seeing on live tv.
the complete lack of preparedness or forethought to even having a basic kit [like a 5 gallon bucket of stuff] to get through a couple of days is amazing.
I'm 2500 miles away and I knew it was coming.
but I'm looking at people that just watched Houston get completely epically flooded for 3 days standing on the side of the road with no shoes, no medications, not even a jacket.

 

[Rick]

Let's see here, three things . . . !> Houston 2> August 3 jacket. Now which one doesn't belong there.

Your right about all the rest though fiver but a jacket in Houston in August? I can see plainly why they don't have a jacket with them. Half of them probably don't even own a jacket.
.

 

[Ian]

Don't get me going on how dumb people can be. Houston has had two 500-year floods in the past three years, NOT counting this one. There really cannot be an excuse this time.

 

[fiver]

well yeah a jacket might be a bit much but if I'm gonna stand out in the rain I'm wearing something water repellant.

I'm mostly speaking of the areas getting hit right now, these people have been watching this happen to their neighbors to the west and they know the storm is moving east.
it's not like it popped up in the mountains overnight and dumped 3-4' of snow then warmed up to 70-f in the morning.
it's a hurricane.
they have been showing it on TV for over a week, you'd think maybe just the tornadoes would have been a clue sumthin is going on.


I'm just waiting for the looting to start.

 

[popper]

I'm just waiting for the looting to start. Already started. Yes, city management flopped again - what do you expect? Same as Katrina. Wait for something to happen then want a bunch of gov. money to fix it. Houston knew it was coming and would be bad but what do you do? Deal with it or leave it for the looters? As Ben's pic of Hobby shows, bad planning. Corps wouldn't even start draining the ponds - we've seen that all over the country.

 

[Rick]

Yeah like I said fiver you are right about all the rest. As for me I wouldn't be standing out in that rain cause I wouldn't have been there by the time the rain started. Call me chicken or call me smart but that kind of weather ain't sumpin to mess with. Maybe call me a smart chicken.

 

[Ian]

Popper: Answer is if you're living there for whatever reason, and you see a hurricane 100 miles off shore on the radar making a bee-line for you, and you were under 20' of water last year when the same thing happened, YOU GET OUT. Have a travel trailer and extra gas ready to go at all times, or if you can't afford that, grab your chit'n'git bag be the first one out of town in your Honda or whatever fits in your apartment's parking garage. Emphasis on "be the first one out". Carry a couple of empty 5-gal fuel cans in the trunk at all times, fill them up when you bail out, before everyone else does. This is NOT a difficult concept, yet somehow it's impossible.

 

[fiver]

I'm seeing travel trailers [not mobile homes which need preparation and permits and stuff] people live in being flooded.
I'm just like.... your house has wheels, I mean seriously 15 minutes and your out.
out with everything you own.

 

[KeithB]

I'm not going to second guess anyone's decision to stay or leave. Oftimes there are more casualties from evacuating than there are by hunkering down. I think this is a case where what is best individually may not be best for the total population and vice versa. If you are prepared to stay then stay, if you're prepared to leave then leave. Not being prepared for either is not good.

 

[KHornet]

A lot of folks laugh and poke fun at preppers. I am with Fiver on the
5 gal bucket (or maybe two of them) with basic necessities like
toilet paper, trash bags, 4-5 bottles of water, peanut butter, candles,
matches, flashlight, first aid stuff, couple of sweat shirts,etc.etc. etc.

Have mine in a couple of totes, but 5 gal pail work well, and
one can be a toilet when shtf. Ya just never know.

In Flood or tornado country it pays to be at least a minimal prepper.

Paul.

 

[Ian]

Not being prepared for either is not good.

Yup. I know lots of people who stayed and by all reports I have to this point they had their ducks in a row and just sorta took Friday afternoon off to wander home and put up the hurricane shutters, maybe draw up some extra water in the bathtubs (in addition to the normal large stores of drinking water), test fire the genset, and pick up some extra beer.

 

[freebullet]

If I lived in that area it would be on a boat.

Hey, Paul, wanna buy a carp filled economy car on the cheap, one in 10 may have a catfish in the trunk.

 

[fiver]

I hate to say this but I bet many of those flood cars are still better than some of the piles of scrap I have milked 2-300K miles out of.
I had a 65 Newport in particular that I kept going to 265-K and would have got more but just about everything surrounding the engine and transmission was missing. [plus it needed hard seats in the heads at this point]
it was probably the first 3 door vehicle on the road.
it was also straight piped due to the exhaust pipe and muffler falling off one afternoon when going over the train tracks, thankfully the fence across the back of our apartment building had a chain link fence.
a couple of soup cans [as shims and as an adaptor] some steel wool [yes as an inline muffler] a couple of clothes hangers and a few hose clamps later I was back in business.

 

[Pistolero]

Gonna be a lot of nasty junkers on used car lots in a month or two. Beware.

As to getting out....Like Ian said, you should have already looked at a topo map to get a clue
of your elevation if you haven't been there long, or ask neighbors if this area has ever flooded.
If so....bail early. If I wasn't able to go early, I'd take the smallest county road I knew that headed out
of town. Extra can of gas, and a basic set of survival gear should be able to be put together in 1/2 hour
or so.

I went through a number of hurricanes when I was a kid. I got past the "I'm tough, I can beat this weather."
attitude real early in life. We went to help a friend deal with some damage at his beach house north of Jacksonville
Fla after one hurricane. After we did the lifting - walked down to the beach. It had been two dunes to cross to
get to the long ~100 yd rundown to the water from the top of the second dune. Got to the top of the first dune...
and looked over. No second dune and only about 40 yds to the water. That took a bit of
looking to even believe. Walked to the water's edge and looked north and south. Straight as a string. Some very large
number of cubic miles of sand was ---- elsewhere, overnight. Note to self: We are NOT in charge here, we are
passengers on this train, be careful not to get run over by Mother Nature when she gets all pissy. Good lesson,
still impressive to me, about 50+ yrs later. Don't think you are tougher than a hurricane. You are not. Get out if you
are not on high ground already. If you are within a mile or two of the coast...just get out.

Bill

 

[Bret4207]

When your Fearless Leader, The Mayor, tells you not to leave your fair city even though it perfectly obvious your going to get clobbered , I guess a lot of people listen. Reminds me of New Orleans.

 

[Ben]

Bill,


Gonna be a lot of nasty junkers on used car lots in a month or two. Beware.

Ha, if you open the door and water pours out, this one might not be such a great buy after all.

Ben

 

[300BLK]

When your Fearless Leader, The Mayor, tells you not to leave your fair city even though it perfectly obvious your going to get clobbered , I guess a lot of people listen. Reminds me of New Orleans.

NOLA is/was just a disaster waiting to happen. I can't imagine wanting to build a city below sea level and then that close to the coast and river....

At first I questioned why the Houston Mayor didn't order an evacuation, but then I wondered where do 5 million people go? That could have been a CF of epic proportions as well.

"A once in a lifetime event"....really? I wonder how many of the folks that relocated to Houston during/after Katrina feel that way.