A METEOROLOGIST found miles of parked and abandoned cars after a hurricane hit Florida – revealing a strategy Floridians adopted to save their cars.
The logic is sound, but it creates a frightening, apocalyptic scene.
On average, Key West, Florida, is affected by a hurricane every six years, with a 16% chance of being hit by a storm during an Atlantic hurricane season.
Hurricane Irma devastated the region in 2017, leaving several homes destroyed, buildings collapsed and vehicles or caravans displaced.
AccuWeather posted a video to meteorologist Reed Timmer’s Facebook page, passing a disheveled group of abandoned cars along bridges.
The video was 44 seconds long and showed cars parked side by side along the road leading to the bridge, and equally close together on the other side of the bridge.
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When speaking to local residents, Reed Timmer said it’s not a strange scene for anyone who has seen a hurricane or two.
“This is a common practice in Key West, when people are unable to evacuate in their cars, they park them near bridges – the highest point available,” the company wrote in the comments.
One person responded that in Texas it is common to see cars lined up along the highways during hurricanes in case they run out of gas.
If the vehicle is unharmed and people return to the area after the storm passes, many of the cars could be recovered and taken home.
However, for one woman on the islands of St. Thomas, the vehicles abandoned by those fleeing Hurricane Irma have become a major thorn in her side.
Maxine Nunez found an abandoned and damaged sedan on her property and called police to remove it, according to Virgin Islands Gazette.
The sedan had seen better days – the suspension was damaged and bent, the doors, fenders and side panels were dented, the tires were missing, and the sunroof and windshield were broken.
The police told him that the vehicle was abandoned by someone who had left the island to escape the storm and nothing could be done.
The main problem, according to Police Commissioner Delroy Richards Sr., is that the department has no place to store abandoned vehicles after they are towed.
With the high volume of abandoned vehicles, Richards noted that police often don’t get involved unless the vehicle is blocking traffic or is considered evidence of a crime.
Nunez wrote his own license plate on the vehicle saying, “VIPD: Abandoned Car,” asking authorities to properly tag the vehicle.
Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc in Florida
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The tropical storm was considered the costliest hurricane to hit the state.
Hurricane Irma hit the Sunshine State in the fall of 2017 and brought with it heavy rain and strong winds — leaving nearly 8 million homes without power, representing up to 70% of the state.
The storm was one of the costliest hurricanes to devastate Florida, costing an estimated $50 billion in repairs.
The Florida Keys suffered the most damage, with many homes destroyed by flooding and incredibly strong winds that knocked out water and fuel supplies, knocked out power to most area residents, and made cell phone communication incredibly difficult.
The storm’s blow was so broad that Georgia and South Carolina also suffered some damage in the form of power outages and flooding, leaving more than 100,000 people without power for several days.
The U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Cuba also suffered damage from Hurricane Irma.
Source: Complete team
Its license plate was removed, but the vehicle remained.
She told the channel that she gave up calling the police as it often led to a dead end.
“When I go to talk to the police, I feel like I’m a nuisance,” Nunez said.
In 2019, Virgin Gorda, an island that is part of the British Virgin Islands, collected 180 abandoned vehicles on the island and stacked them on a ship to be processed and potentially turned into scrap, according to Virgin Islands Online News.
Residents apparently complained that several abandoned vehicles had become breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which can spread diseases, due to the accumulation of stagnant water on the floor.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story