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Sunday, May 16, 2010

The 2010 Tennessee Flood

Current Mood:
CC is listening to: Nothing right now--playing World of Warcraft while I type this entry

If you've read Steve's blog or are on Facebook, you probably know by now that I lost my car in the great Tennessee flood of 2010 (it's being called the kind of flood that only happens once every 500 years, it was that bad). I've often said to Steve, "If I didn't go through it myself I never would have believed it if someone told me the water level rose so fast that it went from nothing to covering a car's front grill in two hours."

Here's a slide show of the pictures.

So here's pretty much a timeline of what's happened:

May 1, 2010: Day of the flood
May 2, 2010: Car gets towed from the mall parking lot. Our Triple A membership covers the cost of the towing for the first 5 miles. Thank goodness we only live 2 miles away from the mall. Towing company suggests to tow it to their lot since it will make things easier all around: easier for them, easier for the insurance company because they have a central location to pick up several vehicles. Their facility's less than 5 miles away too, so I said that was fine.
May 3, 2010: I rent a car. My insurance covers the cost of the rental car while they assess the extent of the damage. My policy gives me $25 a day up to $600. I was able to find a car in the economy category, $13 a day. All I needed to do was to go over there, give my claim number, and say that State Farm will take care of it. Rented it for a week.
May 7, 2010: Received a call from a car inspector at State Farm saying that he inspected the car, and found it to be a total loss. He will forward the claim over to their Total Loss Department for processing. I extended the use of the rental car for another week. Also heard that a friend of mine tried to drive her jeep through the flood but it wasn't able to manage it. She's safe, but the jeep's front axle is broken, and its bearings are shot. Insurance WON'T cover the damages to her car since "she made the decision to drive it into the floodwaters." When I heard this, I was extra relieved that we decided not to start the car at all at the mall. Now I'm just hoping that the amount that State Farm will settle with won't be TOO big of a gap in terms of what I still owe on the car, because if there's a gap, I'm paying the difference out of pocket. Note to self: next time I get a car, get gap insurance until its value and the cost of what I still owe on it level out.
May 15, 2010: State Farm called to give me the settlement offer. I won't give any numbers, but I'll give the formula that was used to come up with the offer: (current value of the car based on their own list + "extra for the vehicle having less mileage than the typical car that age" + sales tax + title fee) - insurance deductible = settlement amount. The good news is that settlement amount > amount I still owe on the car. Not by much, but I was just happy to know that I didn't owe anything :-).

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