No one likes to think about their car getting flooded, but honestly if you think about it, it’s one of the least stressful ways for your car to be totaled.
The question is, what do you do if it happens?
How to tell if your car is flooded
I’m no expert, but here are some ways to tell:
- If you go to start your car, and you notice that the seat of your pants is wet.
- If your teenage son calls you from wherever he parked when he decided to go out during a storm and says, “Hey, the car is flooded.”
- If your town has parking lots where you can park at the beginning of a storm and there’s no water, and a half hour later there’s water to your knees. How is this possible, scientifically? This parking lot is at the top of a hill!
Your First Step
The first step is to determine if the car is salvageable.
For example, they say that if it’s flooded with salt water, it’s not salvageable, as the salt will eventually corrode the wires at inopportune times, as opposed to right now, during a rainstorm on a Sunday night when no mechanics are open. Whereas freshwater cars may be fixable if you act quickly. So the first thing you want to do is taste the water.
“Okay, it’s not salty… But I definitely wouldn’t call it fresh.”
Alternatively, you can consult a map and see if it’s likely that this is ocean water. If you keep your paper maps in your car, they are not salvageable.
Even if it’s fresh water, it depends on how deep it is, and whether water got into the engine. How high up is the engine? You don’t know. Open up your hood in the rain and check.
No, scratch that. Look in the car. Is there water in your cup holders? If there isn’t, or if there is but it’s in water bottles, you may be okay.
What do you do?
If it’s fresh water, and it’s below the cup holders, good news! Your car may still be fixable. Though it may be harder to do so if your car is still under water. So first, remove your car from the water, by force if necessary.
On this matter, experts say that #1: Don’t start the car, as you can make the situation worse, and #2: Get the car out of the water as quickly as possible.
How? Should I carry it? Should I see if I can find a tow truck that’s willing to drive into a brand-new lake on a rainy Sunday night to pick up my car?
You may have to call a fishing boat.
So if you start the car, it might make things worse and total it. If you don’t start the car, the water level might get higher and total it. So it’s all in the hands of Hashem either way, and he’s the one who decided to build an entire lake in a half hour in the parking lot of a fitness studio.
Hey, maybe all the people in the fitness studio can get together and push each other’s cars out of the lake! Or is all this working out just to be able to lift items of a specific shape while lying on their backs?
If your son was the one in this situation, he’s just going to drive the car home and say, “What? I made it home! I’m going to go take a shower.”
Get Rid of the Water
Whether the car is at the mechanic or your son drove it home, you want to get as much standing water out of the car as possible, so that in case the insurance company doesn’t deem your car dead, it doesn’t smell like it is. You want the actual carpet to at least begin drying without for example having to wait for the entire emergency roll of paper towels under the seat to dry first. Some good they were in an emergency.
So for example, there’s probably like a foot of water in the trunk, or, if you have a minivan, in that convenient space under the floor that your seat folds into.
Get a cup – for example, that small collapsible washing cup that lives in your glove compartment so that if you take your family on a trip you can completely forget that you have a washing cup until you take out the bentchers – and start bailing water out of the trunk as if you’re on a sinking rowboat in which your water bottles and pretzel bags are floating free. And hey, look! Water bottles and… When did we have sandwiches?
Get your son to help, even if he’s already showered.
You also want to get the mats out, because what is a mat but a second layer of carpet? It’s bad enough that there’s one layer of carpet. It’s not clear why all cars are made with carpet instead of hardwood floors. Why carpeting? Is it just for the pun?
And yes, you can do all of this during the rainstorm if you have to. What, are you going to get your mats wetter than they already are?
Should you call anyone?
Yes. Contact your insurance company to find out if you should contact your insurance company. Or ask your insurance agent. This is why you have an insurance agent, who is trained to say things like, “We’ve never had this conversation.”
You also want to call the mechanic, who will not be able to see your car that day, as he’s flooded with calls. (Sorry.)
You also might want to call Chaveirim, to see if they have any way of helping you. In my experience, they will show up with a wet/dry vac and a phone number you can call when you want to return it.
People have a lot of confidence in wet/dry vacs, but they never work for me. Every wet/dry vac I’ve ever borrowed has come with zero attachments, so you have to crouch in a puddle and run the open end of a hose over the same 3-inch-wide patch of carpet several thousand times and then feel it and go, “It’s not really any dryer, is it?” And then you have to decide whether to spend another half hour on this patch of carpet or whether to move on to the next patch. And then you’re deaf for the rest of the day.
So I’m pretty sure the main function of a wet/dry vac is what you already did with the washing cup before Chaveirim got there.
Bring it to the mechanic
When you do bring it to the mechanic, he will tell you that he can’t actually see what’s wrong with your car, because to do that he needs to plug a diagnostic device into your car’s computer, and your car’s computer is flooded.
So first of all, that is Thing Wrong with the Car #1, I would say. You could tell that without a device.
Second, apparently mechanics just have a device that tells them what’s wrong with your car? I am way less impressed now. Is that cheating? Your doctor doesn’t have this one device that he plugs into you that tells him what’s wrong. He has several hundred devices, and he has to figure out which one to plug into you, or just do all of them. But a mechanic can apparently plug a device into your dashboard and say, “Hey! Looks like your tire fell off!” And you’d be all, “How did he know that? Should I get a second opinion?” It’s the device. But if the computer is under water, the mechanic can’t plug it in and tell that for example, the computer is under water. So he says to come back in a week.
Dry it out Better
In the meantime, you’re going to do what you can to get rid of more moisture. Because the car is not drying, despite a day of you figuring that, seeing as it’s 90 degrees out, which means that if you keep your car windows closed, the car can reach 140 degrees, which is almost the temperature you leave your oven on overnight when you’re making dried fruit on Pesach, this should be just like dried fruit.
The car does not smell like dried fruit.
Turns out a lot of the water did evaporate, but it had nowhere to go, so the van just spent a day fogging up like a sauna. Of evaporated dirty water.
So what the mechanic suggests is that you leave your windows open and run the heat on full blast with the A/C button on. And I guess park it somewhere that it won’t be stolen while you’re doing that, such as a friendly town in the Midwest.
You can also try putting the car in rice.
How much rice do I need to put it in? More than I can schlep home in the car, obviously. Maybe just put the computers in rice, so the mechanic can use them to see if all this work is for nothing? I don’t know where the computers are.
MECHANIC: “It says here you got rice in the computer.”
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
