Despite the satellite monitoring which feeds our minute-by-minute weather reports, Hurricane Katrina became hazardous to theGulfCoast so fast that people and businesses in its path could scarcely act. As in most such catastrophes, the public's and media's focus is first on people, then on destruction of real property and the economy. So the automotive aspects are almost an afterthought.
Katrina struck the Gulf Coast southeast of New Orleans at 6 a.m. on Monday, August 29. On the previous business day, Friday the 26th, the force and direction of the storm was still indefinite. And about 100,000 of them in Louisiana alone decided the danger wasn't imminent enough to evacuate or couldn't physically do so.
Their vehicles were left behind to swim out the storm, along with others, mostly left behind one or more of the family's other sets of wheels. A lot of the left-behinds were rolled up like wads of used Kleenex.
For the most part, businesses like auto dealerships didn't get the word to close until sometime over the weekend. This left a lot of customer cars and trucks in the service departments, or even new models awaiting Monday delivery.
The hurricane thus destroyed tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of vehicles in three strokes: first, those directly impacted by winds or surges of water driven by the winds; second, by falling trees and collapsing buildings including garages, and lastly, especially in New Orleans, by flood waters pouring in after the levees broke. I've seen no media reports, but it seems likely some vehicles and their occupants vanished when countless highway bridges collapsed. These lost vehicles include not only those of private owners, but companies, institutions, governments and automobile dealership inventories.
In the aftermath, automobile business even in areas not hit by flood or wind came to a standstill. Because of today's technology, you can't do business such as processing credit applications without computers. And you can't run computers without electric power or telephone lines. Power was out as far north as Jackson, Miss., and Birmingham, Ala., three days after the storm. Of course, most of Louisiana was blacked out and some areas of the Florida Panhandle still were without power from Hurricane Dennis, a Category Three storm that struck at NavarreBeach on July 10.
Further, communications have been largely blanked by the combination of power and telephone lines down, so even powerful entities like automobile companies and the professionally curious, like reporters, can't find out what is going on. Reliable reports are piecemeal, and sources are swamped.
Toyota, however, was able to tell TCC that it had 21 dealers in Mississippi and Alabama who sustained damage, with five dealerships "devastated;" it had no information on the New Orleans Lexus dealer, and reported Lexus dealers in Baton Rouge, Jackson, Mobile and Birmingham were out of power and thus out of business temporarily even without direct storm damage.
Ford Motor Company was still assessing the situation late Thursday, September 1, but could report that its Ford Credit unit announced a 90-day moratorium on car payments in hurricane areas. The loan contract end dates will simply be extended.
It will be months before all this hash is settled out. Insurance company adjusters will have to give property claims their primary attention, especially that part of a homeowner's policy that provides for extra living expenses when the home is uninhabitable. The largest companies, like State Farm and Allstate, probably have special automotive adjusters, however, who can tend to claims for repairing and replacing vehicles in a timely fashion.
Losses to New Orleans and Mississippi coast auto dealers will run into the multi-millions for facilities and vehicle inventories, but at least they will be able to reclaim revenue through replacing Katrina-lost vehicles. The problem will be how people without jobs can pay for them in the face of other storm costs, because no insurance recoveries will ever blanket 100 percent of the losses.
TCC will bring you more detailed reports on Katrina's dimensions as the facts unfold.
