PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – The quick and heavy downpour from Wednesday’s storm left many flooded and stranded cars.
Bill Canady, owner of Canady and Branch Auto Shop, said the weather can cause serious car problems.
“If they drive into it, which I advise them not to, they can block up the engine and mess up the transmission,” Canady said. “If it’s just parked and the water just rises up and gets inside the car, it depends on how high it goes.”
Canady said it’s a different story if the water gets to the car’s interior.
“If it gets just on the carpet, you might just get away with replacing the carpet,” he said. “Of course, if it gets on the seats, you’ve got a problem there. You also have computers underneath the carpet.”
A day after the storm, he’s already gotten a couple of calls of people’s cars being damaged by the water.
He said based on past experience, he expects that number to quickly rise.
“We had a storm a couple of years ago and we probably had about 20 of them,” Canady said. “A couple of them were totaled, but most of them, we took the seats out, replaced the carpet, the padding and there were a couple that had dead engines.”
He said water damage car repairs can cost up to thousands of dollars.
“We can have anywhere from a car come in for about $300 or $400 four hundred-dollar repair to a $6,000 repair.”
He advised people to not drive through water and know which areas flood to keep cars safe during rainstorms.
“If you live in an area that normally floods like that,” he said, “try to find a place where you can park your car away from that area.”
