Flooded vehicles may surface

Here are tips to avoid purchasing a lemon

A flooded car — one of hundreds of thousands inundated during hurricanes Harvey or Irma — might be for sale on Craigslist or at a used car lot near you.

But unless you are mechanically inclined and enjoy solving electrical problems, chances are you’ll want to avoid buying it.

Consumer protection groups are warning buyers across the country to beware of cars that sustained heavy damage or were declared total losses by insurers. As always happens after flood events, a large number will be diverted from their trips to the scrap yard, sold to unscrupulous dealers at rock-bottom prices, dried out, cleaned up and put back on the retail marketplace, where they wait for buyers who don’t look carefully for signs of flooding.

“Sometimes a buyer gets lucky and can enjoy the deal,” said Lynne McChristian, Florida spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute, an industry supported organization. “But there are many things that can go wrong with engine components and mechanical parts.”

Not to mention electronic components. Dirt, silt and sewage typically found in floodwaters can wreak havoc on the circuit boards and wire harnesses found throughout today’s high-tech vehicles, creating an endless series of fits and failures, consumer advocates say.

While the exact number of cars ruined from floodwaters in Harvey and Irma isn’t known, Roger Morris, spokesman for the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau, said flooding is to blame for the vast majority of vehicle damage reported to insurers after the storms.

So far, Harvey damaged about 350,000 insured vehicles while Irma’s toll stands at about 154,000, Morris said. Lynne McChristian, Insurance Information Institute