A medical student from South Carolina found herself with three parking tickets after her car was unknowingly pushed into a tow-away zone by a sudden flash flood that hit the city last month.
Anna Brooks had parked her car legally near her medical school but later discovered it partially submerged in floodwaters, with several tickets already placed on the windshield.
“I had to ask myself, ‘Where’s my car?'” Brooks recounted to Fox Weather. “When I finally located it, I also found parking tickets, which wasn’t ideal,” she said.
The storm that hit Charleston unleashed over 11 inches of rain in just two days, transforming streets into streams and pushing Brooks’ vehicle a few feet into a restricted area.
Authorities warned residents to avoid travel, causing numerous road closures, as images captured neighborhoods submerged in water up to the knees.
Brooks, who had only recently moved to the area for school, had parked on what appeared to be a calm side street a short distance from her campus.
She did not know that the street she had parked on is notorious among locals for becoming a canal during heavy rain.
‘I think people think that my car literally was like a boat,’ she joked. ‘But it didn’t float that much. It really only floated just a couple of feet’, – but a couple of feet was all that it took.
A Charleston medical student was hit with three parking tickets after her car was swept into a tow-away zone by a flash flood that pummeled the city last month
As the waters surged, Brooks’ car was dislodged and pushed into a designated tow-away zone, where it came to rest.
By the time she tracked it down, the vehicle was half-submerged.
‘I tried to get to it, but me just walking toward my car actually made it drift off,’ she recalled.
Following the floods, first came one ticket but as the car sat stranded in the floodwaters, the vehicle was slapped with another.
Finally, a third citation was issued even after Brooks had already begun the process of contesting the first two.
The absurdity of the situation was not lost on Brooks, who posted a video on TikTok that quickly went viral.
‘To the individual who gave me parking tickets,’ she wrote in the caption, ‘my car floated here!’
The video, showing her car lodged awkwardly between a streetlamp and a flooded curb with soggy tickets slapped under the wipers, racked up thousands of views and comments.
Many were outraged at the city’s lack of leniency in what was clearly an act of nature, rather than negligence.
Anna Brooks, pictured, had originally parked legally near her med school but returned to find her vehicle half-submerged in floodwaters, with its windshield covered with parking tickets
‘As an attorney, I would like to state this is a great defense and you should absolutely fight the tickets. But, also, lol,’ wrote one user.
‘Charleston will ticket you in the middle of a hurricane,’ deadpanned another.
‘Talk about the fact the roads are literally undriveable and they’re still out there giving tickets to people,’ added a third.
In the weeks since the parking violation Brooks has attempted to have the fines waived.
‘I went to the appeals office but they gave me a second ticket because my car was still there,’ she said.
Ultimately, Brooks succeeded in getting two of the three tickets annulled, reducing her total fine to $35 from $135, but by then, her car had been totaled by flood damage and impounded by the city – all before her insurance company could retrieve it.
Charleston, with its low-lying topography and outdated drainage infrastructure, has become increasingly vulnerable to flash floods – a threat that’s only grown more severe as climate change pushes storms to become slower and wetter.
‘It only takes about 12 inches of water to float a mid-size car,’ FEMA warns.
‘People told me that street flooded, but I didn’t realize how fast it would happen, or how much damage it would do,’ Brooks explained.
