Car damage
is, unfortunately, to be expected in the course of vehicle ownership. Whether it’s an errant pothole
, or user error involving a pole at the gas station, cars go through their bumps and scrapes. But sometimes the damage is a little more unusual. Here’s what happened to one woman’s car during the Texas
freeze of 2021. The Texas freeze of 2021
In February 2021, Texans experienced a pretty shocking weather event: the whole state froze. Though temperatures do routinely get down into the 30s during the winter in certain parts of the state, snow is quite rare and reserved mostly for higher elevation locations.
So for the second-largest state in the union to see ice and snow across the board was exceedingly strange—and the government was just as surprised as its residents, unfortunately.
The Houston Chronicle
uses a set of rather shocking numbers to demonstrate the depth of the devastation. Over 4,500,000 people lost power during the storm, 14,000,000 were told to boil drinking water to ensure it was safe for consumption, 1,400 Texans sought help for carbon monoxide poisoning, and 246 residents died as a direct result of the freeze. Striking, too, were the monetary costs. For example, says the Chronicle, a gas bill for the suburb of Sealy is generally $80,000 for the month. In February of 2021, it was $2,000,000. Clearly, Texas was not prepared.
A frozen car in Texas
Amid this grim scene, there were moments of levity. BuzzFeed
reports that Kiana Vance, of Dallas, had parked her car on the top floor of her parking garage one day, pre-freeze, and left it there. Her new car had a home on a lower floor, so she didn’t see the old car for a while. When she returned to the top floor around the time of the freeze, she made quite the discovery. Vance found that the pipe above her parked car had burst, and the water had frozen solid mid-cascade. The result is a rather gorgeous ice sculpture. The car is covered in stalactites, from the giant one connecting the burst pipe to the roof to the dozens of tiny ones that adorn the bumper.
Vance’s final thought on the matter, says BuzzFeed: “I guess the one thing I’ll say is...I’m never parking under a pipe ever again."
Preparation is key
The moral of the story: always be prepared.
First, maybe don’t park under a pipe and then leave your car there for an undetermined length of time. Second, make sure you have great car insurance
. The Jerry
app is a good place to start. A licensed broker, Jerry does all the hard work of finding cheap quotes from the top name-brand insurance companies and buying new car insurance. Jerry will even help you cancel your old policy.
And to ensure you always have the lowest rate, Jerry will send you new quotes every time your policy comes up for renewal, so you’re always getting the coverage you want at the best price. This level of service is why Jerry earned a 4.7/5 rating on the App Store and made it the top insurance app in the country.
4.7
