Cars Damaged by Hurricane Sandy Pass 250,000 Mark
Hurricane Sandy damaged or destroyed more than 250,000 cars, the National Insurance Crime Bureau said Thursday. The Des Plaines, Ill., agency noted that these preliminary figures only include insured cars whose owners filed claims after the October 2012 storm. Many more cars were likely damaged — cars without comprehensive insurance, for example, and thousands of dealership vehicles.
“If it was not insured for that kind of a loss, then it wouldn’t generate an auto claim” to count in the figure, NICB spokesman Frank Scafidi said. NCIB also said the figure includes a wide variety of claims, from debris-caused dents to complete flood losses.
It goes without saying that the storm’s death toll — more than 100 residents in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, The New York Times reported on Nov. 17 — outweighs all of this. NICB’s tally crested the quarter-million mark largely due to an influx of claims in New York, which saw another 20,000 claims versus November’s figures. Of the 250,500 total claims, 210,000 came from New Jersey and New York.
Some flood-damaged cars undoubtedly made it to the used-car market. Read Car Talk’s tips on how to spot them.
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