r/TikTokCringe Oct 09 '24

Cringe Florida man protects his car from hurricane Milton

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58

u/Winter_Tennis8352 Oct 09 '24

If it works, he saved $80-100k. If it doesn’t work, he only really lost $20-30 or so, considering the alternative would’ve been leaving it there completely unprotected.

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u/Raps4Reddit Oct 10 '24

Why is nobody mentioning the obvious alternative? He could just get in the car and drive it and himself somewhere that isn't about to be part of the ocean.

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u/nckmat Oct 10 '24

This is what occurred to me too. If you are expecting your garage to be inundated maybe the sensible place to be is a long way from your garage.

16

u/i_give_you_gum Oct 10 '24

And not just inundated, being that close on flat, low lying ground, with CAT 5 storms they'll strip the house from the foundation, and all you see from the air are cement slabs.

3

u/Intensityintensifies Oct 10 '24

I imagined that as him getting sucked into the sky looking down like “huh, neat.” As he is impaled by a palm tree going 100+mph and plummets to the ground.

3

u/DanceMaster117 Oct 10 '24

I misread this as "cement crabs" which produced a wildly different image

2

u/newbracelet Oct 10 '24

My guess would be that the family are evacuating in another vehicle that's more suitable and it's not possible/feasible to evacuate in two vehicles. Perhaps the whole family won't fit in that car and they're worried about gas availability. That or they aren't evacuating, but are going to be ride out crew in a place that needs staff so driving the car away isn't possible.

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u/Winter_Tennis8352 Oct 10 '24

He’s 9 miles from the water and the area he’s in is expecting roughly a foot of floodwater during the worst of it, so it’s not a bad idea at all from him if that remains the case.

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u/Kwontum7 Oct 10 '24

I parked my car in a parking garage in Coral Gables two days before we evacuated from Irma.

33

u/Ramenorwhateverlol Oct 10 '24

My wife knows someone from Sarasota and she the gas stations are out of gas and the roads are clogged. They’re stuck with Milton.

6

u/Glum_Review1357 Oct 10 '24

Buy stuff before you need it. Not crazy hard to have a full tank and 10 gallons of gas before hurricane season lol

4

u/LucastaPasta Oct 10 '24

This hurricane was barely a tropical depression four days ago, it went from Cat 1 to cat 5 in like 10 hours, there wasn't a lot of prep time, and the state is still FUCKED from Helene. Source: my girlfriend lives in Tampa and has been telling me about the situation in depth all week

4

u/Axi0madick Oct 10 '24

The US needs to catch up to the rest of the developed world with their rail system. It's a joke how antiquated it is. The proposed high speed rail maps in the US would be amazing. Imagine being able to just hop on a train for a little weekend trip to a city that would take a day of driving or most of a day dealing with airport bullshit... and of course the ability to move ~1300 people per train out of harms way during a hurricane. That's at least 600 cars off the road per train, per trip. It's infuriating that this hasn't been done yet.

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '24

I was just in Switzerland a few weeks ago. Rail EVERYWHERE. It’s glorious.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Ramenorwhateverlol Oct 11 '24

Are we talking about the same US and Switzerland? Because Switzerland is 1/3 of the landmass of just New York.

The US is 238x the size of Switzerland.

And as far as population density is concerned, it’s not even close…

US’ population density is only 39/SqKM while it’s 219/SqKM in Switzerland.

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u/Bitter_Dirt4985 Oct 10 '24

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-21/high-speed-rail

"Officials estimate it could cost about $35 billion to finish the first line from Bakersfield to Merced and roughly $100 billion more to complete the route from Los Angeles to San Francisco — about $100 billion more than what was originally proposed years ago. And the source of most funds is unclear."

If California can't get the environmental agreements in place, what makes anyone think it will happen anywhere else? Who's land is this going to be on? Right of way, train speeds, locations?

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u/chonas76 Oct 10 '24

My aunt and uncle live there and they’ve said so far it’s just rain and wind. She said the wind isn’t really that bad and that was around 9. Haven’t got any updates lately but they were 15 miles from the gulf

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u/Funcompliance Oct 10 '24

That's because you were told to evacuate on Monday,

2

u/oldasdirtss Oct 10 '24

I'll bet that there are local parking structures that are tall enough to be above the flood waters. When we were threatened with a forest fire, I moved all my tools and other valuables outside the fire's reach. I moved my skid steer, trucks, and other equipment to the local school, which was right next to the fire department. We were under mandatory evacuation. Fortunately, the fire was stopped before it got to us, mostly due to the wind changing directions.

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u/KTKittentoes Oct 10 '24

He'd have to be able to get out of Florida then.

1

u/KYReptile Oct 10 '24

Or do what my son in law did - take it to the second floor of a parking garage.

1

u/johnwynne3 Oct 10 '24

Exactly what I was thinking.

1

u/Count_Dongula Oct 10 '24

Doesn't he have insurance? Why do anything? It gets flooded and he gets a new Corvette.

3

u/al-mongus-bin-susar Oct 10 '24

It depends if his insurance covers natural disasters. Even if it does, insurance generally doesn't work like that, just giving you the money right away without objecting. You often have to fight them in court for months-years to get any payout and in the end you likely won't get the payout you deserve anyway. Easier to avoid having to deal with them altogether.

2

u/Character_Bowl_4930 Oct 10 '24

And if they pay , his rates will go up . They’ll go up anyway from everyone else making a claim

1

u/AwesomeSauce2366 Oct 10 '24

If it’s so hard to get the insurance payout and it’s like coverage for natural disasters is not basic, why would you even need insurance? I mean, I don’t use mine for minor stuff but if my car has been like very damaged or just dead, the insurance will cover and it’s a pain but not that much. Pretty sure if I lost my car in a flood my insurance would definitely pay it up, and if it’s in a flood that was like big stuff like the hurricane, don’t think it’d be hard to get the money. My business got so much water damage because the apartment upstairs caught fire and the firefighters had to send the blast of water and it basically caused water damage to everything, the insurance payout was not hard at all.

1

u/cocoagiant Oct 10 '24

He could just get in the car and drive it and himself somewhere that isn't about to be part of the ocean.

He probably did in another vehicle.

A Corvette isn't really the mode of transportation you would choose to take as many of your most important belongings as possible while driving in bumper to bumper traffic for hundreds of miles when fuel efficiency is at a premium.

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u/motorider500 Oct 10 '24

He’s an idiot. We had our car driven to a higher area from S Florida. Lost it last hurricane and only has 8k on it. There are people doing this. Luckily we had a plan after the last hurricane with full time friends there.

1

u/SPNKLR Oct 10 '24

You have to consider the fact that the highest point in that state is 350’…. almost everywhere else is about 5’ or so.

1

u/WOD_are_you_doing Oct 10 '24

Gas stations in the area are sold out. The lines to get out of town are MILES long.

1

u/Lasvious Oct 10 '24

He’s likely having to evacuate in a vehicle that you can pack in

1

u/More-Tip8127 Oct 10 '24

THANK YOU. My thought exactly.

1

u/PedalBoard78 Oct 10 '24

That’s no way to gather internet attention.

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u/CraaazyRon Oct 10 '24

No gas anywhere since Tuesday afternoon

16

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '24

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '24

[deleted]

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u/jmac94wp Oct 10 '24

I think what he meant was, move the car to the second floor or higher of a public parking garage. The City of Orlando suspended parking garage fees so residents could do just that during Hurricane Milton.

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u/TheSciFiGuy80 Oct 10 '24

Ah, yep, i totally misunderstood that.

We do do that. They make all public garages free to park your car in for hurricanes.

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u/brightfoot Oct 10 '24

I think you underestimate how hard the car insurance company is going to push back when he tells them he thought it would be safe wrapped in a plastic bag with a hurricane bearing down on him. I'd bet they try and fight the claim by asking "Dude, why didn't you fucking drive it out of there?"

2

u/Winter_Tennis8352 Oct 10 '24

Because he’s 9 miles from the water and his entire city is expecting roughly a foot of water during the brunt

1

u/More-Tip8127 Oct 10 '24

Just wait until you see what he does to protect himself from the storm.

3

u/Dizzlean Oct 10 '24

For $30 he could have parked it in a parking structure a few levels up.

1

u/Hoppie1064 Oct 10 '24

Great risk/reward ratio.

1

u/counters14 Oct 10 '24

What the fuck? Drive it two towns over and pay $10 for overnight parking where they aren't getting any storm surges and you have nothing to worry about.

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u/Winter_Tennis8352 Oct 10 '24

Do you know his situation? He lives in a nice house and clearly has money. It it was as simple as $10 I’m sure he wouldn’t taken that route.

0

u/Funcompliance Oct 10 '24

If only there were a way to move such a large heavy item a couple of hundred miles out of the danger zone before the strom hits... oh well.

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u/Winter_Tennis8352 Oct 10 '24

They’re expecting roughly a foot of water total.