Florence Floodwaters Total Thousands Of Cars, Stranding Locals

The first thing that hit Ashley Simpson when she opened her car door was the smell: a rotten, stale, mold smell, leftover from the sewage-contaminated floodwaters that engulfed her silver 2010 Chevrolet HHR Cruiser during Hurricane Florence. The next thing to hit her were the gnats flying out that had been breeding amid the mold for nearly a week.

Simpson returned to her home in New Bern, N.C., after evacuating during the storm to find that her house, flooded with 18 inches, was trashed, and her car was ruined. Her car will join an estimated thousands of others in the Carolinas that have been flooded out by Florence. Those vehicles are now scattered among the streets waiting to be towed, sitting in salvage lots to be auctioned off for parts, or potentially being resold under an illegal guise to trick buyers into purchasing duds.

These cars may look fine on the outside,