Everybody plans for the house. Almost nobody plans for the cars
By the time a storm is on the map, most Titusville households have the shutters figured out, the water bought, and the generator gassed. Then somebody walks outside and looks at the driveway. The daily driver is easy. It is the second car, the truck that has not started since spring, and the project car under the tarp that nobody has a plan for. After 28 years working every storm since 1998, we can tell you that is the conversation people have too late.
Here is the version we would rather have with you in May.
Know what your street actually does in water
North Brevard is not one flood picture. It is several. The low ground near the river and the drainage that feeds it behaves differently than the neighborhoods up on the ridge, and the low stretches along US-1 hold water long after the rain quits. A car parked in the wrong dip does not need a dramatic surge to be finished. It needs a few inches sitting in the right place for a few hours.
Walk your own street after any hard summer downpour, before the season gets serious. Where does the water pool? How long does it take to clear? Which end of the block drains and which end does not? That fifteen-minute walk in June tells you more about where to park in September than any map will.
Move the non-runner before a watch turns into a warning
This is the honest part, and we would rather say it plainly than have you find out the hard way. Tow capacity in this county evaporates roughly 48 hours out. Once a warning goes up, every truck we have is committed, and so is everybody else’s. Crews are working crashes, moving equipment, and handling the calls that were booked days earlier. If your non-runner is still sitting in a low driveway at that point, it is likely staying there.
A dead car is not a last-minute item. It is a first-week item. If you know that truck has not turned over since spring, the time to move it is when the forecast is still boring. One call, one flatbed, done on a normal Tuesday. We handle that out of our Titusville coverage year round, and the week nothing is brewing is the week it is easy.
Where to actually put a car
“Higher ground” gets said a lot and planned rarely. Make it specific. The best spot is usually a friend’s or a relative’s lot inland, on ground you have actually seen stay dry. Second best is a paved lot on high ground with permission from whoever owns it, and permission matters, because lots get cleared and towed after storms.
What does not work: parking under a tree because it feels sheltered. Trees are the single most common thing we see land on a car in this county. Same with parking tight against a fence line, up against a seawall, or in the lowest corner of a lot because that space was open. Pick the parking spot for the water and the wind, not for convenience.
The project car and the single-car garage
If you have a garage and two cars, one of them is sleeping outside. Our take: the garage goes to whichever car you cannot replace or drive away. That is usually the classic or the project. The daily driver has insurance, wheels that roll, and the ability to leave. A half-finished restoration on jack stands has none of that.
If the project car is not on its own wheels, decide early whether it goes on a flatbed to somewhere inland or stays and gets the garage. Loading a car that will not roll or steer is not a rushed job, and it is not a job for the day before landfall. Cars like that are exactly what our heavier equipment out of Titusville handles, and they need a scheduled slot, not a scramble.
Fuel, photos, paperwork
Three small jobs that pay off, all doable in an afternoon:
- Fill every tank. A full tank means you can leave, run an errand after, or move a car again without hunting for an open pump. Fuel lines here get long fast and stay long after.
- Photograph each vehicle before the weather. Walk around it, get the body panels, the interior, and a clear shot of the odometer. Date-stamped photos of the condition beforehand make any claim conversation afterward simpler.
- Get the paperwork out of the glovebox. Registration, insurance card, title if you have it. Put it with your household documents, not in the car sitting in the driveway.
What water does to a car that looks fine
This is the part that surprises people. A car that sat in salt water and came out looking clean is not a car that came out fine. Modern vehicles carry control modules, connectors, and wiring harnesses low in the body, and salt water in those places does its work slowly. Things run for a week and then start behaving strangely. Windows, sensors, the fuel system, the charging system.
So if a vehicle has been sitting in water, do not turn the key to test it. Cranking it is the fastest way to turn a maybe into a definitely. Get it moved on a flatbed and let somebody qualified look at it dry. We move a lot of those cars in the days after a storm, and the ones that were never started come out of it better than the ones somebody tried.
Do not drive through standing water on US-1
Every storm, somebody looks at a flooded stretch, decides it is only a few inches, and goes for it because the detour costs ten minutes. You cannot judge depth on a road you know well when the water is flat and brown, and you cannot see that the shoulder washed out underneath it. Cars stall in the middle, and then a small problem is a rescue.
Turn around. The detour is ten minutes. Getting pulled out of a flooded lane, when trucks are already stacked up, is a much longer day. If you do get stuck, stay put, stay buckled, and call. That is emergency work, and we treat it that way.
The queue afterward is real
Here is what the days after look like from inside a tow truck. Debris comes first, because roads have to open before anything else happens. Then the crashes and the blocked lanes. Then flooded cars, and there are a lot of them at once. We work as fast as the roads allow, and we still cannot be everywhere the first morning.
That is why the plan matters. Everything you handle in advance is something you are not standing in line for later. Move the non-runner early, park the rest somewhere you have actually looked at, and keep the tanks full.
If you want to get a vehicle moved before the season gets serious, call us at (321) 499-4610. A real person answers any hour. Tell us what you have, whether it runs, and where it sits, and we will give you a straight, no-surprise price on your tow and a time that works. You can also reach us online. We have worked every storm on this coast since 1998, and the households that come through them easiest are the ones that made the boring phone call in May.