To prepare for Hurricane Florence, one North Carolina family decided to try to drive their Volkswagen Jetta up two supremely sketchy makeshift ramps, and onto the front porch. It’s not to save the car from the storm like we saw with last year’s hurricanes, either—it’s for a very different reason.
It’s hard not to root for the people in this video posted to Facebook by LaSha Ross. The clip starts with a Jetta lined up with a board and a closet door—both lying precariously over cinderblocks. A little girl is heard singing before the driver puts the pedal down and rockets the car up the ramps.
The tires squeal, the board cracks, and the door falls down. But at the end of the loud chaos, the car miraculously ends up mostly on the porch, though it takes a a driver change and a little push to get it all the way up:
This all happened in Lumberton, North Carolina yesterday. I called up LaSha Ross, who shot much of the video, and she actually told me it was her husband, Devin, who came up with the idea of driving the car onto the porch, but it wasn’t for the obvious reason.
“It wasn’t actually to save the car... it was to get the car on the porch for electricity,” she told me over the phone. She said the family plans to use the car as a generator, plugging household appliances into a 1000W power inverter connected to the 12-volt battery.
The other reason for moving the car, LaSha told me, was that her husband wanted to show that it could be done after his friend voiced some doubts. “He was pretty adamant about proving his point that he could do anything,” she told me.
The good news is that, right now, it seems that LaSha and her family are doing fine. It’s windy and rainy, and water is rising, but there’s no flooding at her house yet. Plus, the car—even after that animated ascent—seems to run well and have no leaks.
As for how the family will get the sedan back down, LaSha told me they’d focus on that later. “Right now we’re worried about if we’re gonna have to swim.”
We’ve got our fingers crossed for them.
(If you’re affected by Hurricane Florence or want to help those who are, our friends at Lifehacker have some resources to check out.)