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Where Do You Store 30,000 Hurricane Damaged Vehicles? On Long Island

Ralph C Friday, February 8, 2013

Part of the fallout of Hurricane Sandy has been trying to figure out what to do with all the vehicles which were damaged in the storm. Some 30,000 vehicles in devastated spots around the northeast coast have been declared totaled by insurance companies, making it difficult for their owners to afford car repair services. In most situations, a salvage company would be able to take the vehicles away right away to re-sell them in whole or in parts, but with such a huge backlog of work ahead of them, the salvage companies can’t take away all those vehicles at once.

So where do you put them? On Long Island. Why can’t they simply remain on the lots where they are usually stored? Because they apparently pose an environmental hazard. Many of the totaled vehicles are leaking oil, gasoline and antifreeze, which can seep into local watersheds and contaminate drinking water.

Right now, 20,000 of the vehicles are being stored in the Town of Riverhead on Long Island. TheSuffolk town will receive $2.7 million to store the cars for as long as one year. At the end of that time, if the cars are not all gone, the contract would need to be renegotiated. Sean Walter, Riverhead’s Town Supervisor, is not as troubled by the environmental aspect of the situation as others have been. “We really believe any environmental disaster claims are really unfounded, and objectively looking at these vehicles they do not look any different than any vehicles parked at a suburban mall across the country,” Walter stated.

What will the fate of the vehicles be? The ones which are not effectively useless (though their insurance companies have declared them as such) may be resold to buyers intact in Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of the world. Those which are not at all useable will probably be stripped for parts.

ralph@longisland.com

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