New Orleans Insurance

The ring mold bath in homelessness by Colleen McGaw’s Mini Cooper brands such as Hurricane Katrina’s water level rose within the red sports coupe.

“It was this form, this grossness everywhere,” McGaw said, recalling found, as they automobiles, to present the conclusion of their college, three months after the storm in his New Orleans neighborhood. “I cried. Lame may seem strange, but I cried. I wanted a car, since I was a child. ”

Two years later, McGaw was shocked to learn by The Associated Press that his beloved Mini turned 3600 miles (5800 km) south of Bolivia. Its new owners - stuck to a complete overhaul of U.S. $ 23,000 (€ 15,700) and counting - is feeling their pain.

Tens of thousands of cars were damaged or destroyed by Katrina, much more under water of New Orleans in a broth corroded by salt water and mud. USA has warned Americans officials keep buying the car were drowned.

But many “cars” Katrina “were shipped overseas, which are often sold via the Internet auction rescue now self-globalisation of the recycling industry.

While the cars used to be auctioned mostly local scrap merchants and serious gearbox, understood the risks related to trade. But over the past five years, an explosion in online distribution has attracted buyers from around the world. It is a “Wild West” market “of the dream car in dirty rockbottom prices, says US-Auto-insurance analyst Brian Sullivan.

“Information is scarce, and you have to wise and know what you’re doing,” he said.

Katrina suspected car - with its wiring nervous, sand in tears and witness mildewed puent - are caught in a number of countries, but Bolivia has become a goal. A local authority considers the environment, 10000 or more flooded cars to the USA can be completed within the nation, import regime in bulk, a smuggler flourishing “Economic Affairs and an insatiable thirst for ‘approval of wheels.

Hurricane relics are part of a plethora of opportunity rapidly imports of South America’s poorest country. Betankt of money to house migrants abroad, the number of vehicles in Bolivia, a few paved streets should double in the next five years.

McGaw’s Mini is still a long way since their entry into the traffic jam.

Wagons south containers on a vessel imported by the Chilean port of Iquique and trucked over the mountains of this city of the valley of the Andes, the Cup is now on a hydraulic lift, gestrippt on its chassis and surrounded by rusty in life .

The new owner - concerned that advertising reduced the car resale value and perhaps smarting Automobile grief - rejected by its mechanics Ramiro Sanchez, to identify or interview.

“It is totally demoralized, but it does not just give, they want to be,” said Sanchez.

The mini-odyssey began, as the McGaw family fled to New Orleans August 28, 2005, the day before landing Katrina.

“I just start packing things to chance - a cocktail dress, shorts of the 7th class,” said McGaw, has been completed since his law studies and head of the Orleans Parish District Court, I do not think it was too Flood. ”

McGaw did in 2004 “red peppers” Mini in a rear-mounted homeless and the city with their parents.

The next morning, Lake Pontchartrain’s flood left by the 17th Street Canal dam, flooding the Lakeview neighborhood in eight feet (2.4 meters) of water and completely submerging the Mini.

If McGaw, finally, saw his car again three months later, it was dry, but covered with salt and mud. A beer can floating had broken through the windows.