High Water in Sacramento and What Actually Covers Your Car

Sacramento sits where the American River joins the Sacramento, behind one of the most extensive levee systems in the country, and the region spends every wet winter thinking about water in a way most of California does not. But the flooding that actually damages cars here is almost never the dramatic kind. It is far more ordinary, and far more preventable.

Where cars actually get flooded

Not in a levee failure. In an underpass that fills in twenty minutes during an atmospheric river. In a flat neighborhood where the storm drains back up faster than they clear, which is a familiar story in the low-lying parts of Natomas, the Pocket and the older streets around Land Park. In a parking garage where the ramp is the low point of the block. And on rural roads out toward the Delta, where a dip in the pavement holds a foot of water that looks like two inches at night.

The mistake that destroys the engine

Water on a road hides two things: its depth and its movement. You cannot judge either from behind a windshield, and the shoulder you would normally use to gauge depth is underwater too. A modern car's air intake sits low, and once water is drawn into the cylinders the engine hydrolocks. It stops instantly, and the internal damage is usually catastrophic rather than repairable. That happens in less water than people expect.

The rule is simple and unglamorous: turn around. A flooded underpass is not a puzzle to solve with momentum. Moving water is worse still, because it lifts and pushes a vehicle at depths that look trivial from the driver's seat.

Which coverage responds

This is the part that surprises people at the worst possible moment. Flood and water damage to a vehicle is generally handled under comprehensive coverage, not collision. Comprehensive is the optional physical-damage coverage that deals with things that happen to your car other than a crash: theft, fire, falling objects, hail, water.

Which leads to the consequence. If you carry liability only, a flooded car is simply your loss. Liability pays other people for harm you cause. It does nothing for your own vehicle, ever, under any circumstances. A lender will require comprehensive and collision while there is a loan on the car, but once the car is paid off that requirement disappears, and plenty of people drop the coverage without thinking about January.

Homeowners and renters policies do not fill this gap either. They generally exclude vehicles, which are expected to be covered by an auto policy. Every one of these points varies in its detail from carrier to carrier and policy to policy, so read your declarations page or ask whoever sold it to you rather than taking a web page's word for it.

If it already happened

1. Do not try to start it. Cranking a wet engine turns a possible repair into a certain replacement.
2. Photograph the water line on the car, and on something fixed nearby for scale, before anything is moved.
3. Report it to your carrier promptly rather than after you have decided what it will cost.
4. Expect the depth of water relative to the interior and the electronics to drive the total-loss decision, and expect a saturated car to be totaled more often than the visible damage suggests.

A note on buying used afterward

Flood cars move. A vehicle branded salvage in one state can be cleaned, shipped and retitled elsewhere, and a big regional flood is followed by a wave of them. If you are shopping used in the months after a wet winter, a history report and a mechanic looking specifically for silt under the carpet and corrosion on connectors are worth what they cost.

Not sure whether you carry comprehensive? Send us your current policy and we will read it with you.