Do you own the red Chrysler that became the face of the Kelly/Midvale flood?

Those unfortunate fish that road-clearing teams were unable to save before they passed on were not the city’s only Hurricane Irene casualties.

Sitting along East River Drive, on a narrow one-way block running parallel to Kelly Drive between the Route 1 overpass and Midvale Avenue in East Falls, is an unfortunate older-model red Chrysler Concorde.

The license plate(s) had been removed. Its front tires are flat. A solitary Slim Jim sits in the center console. A North Jersey AAA sticker is affixed to the bumper. The windows bear signs consistent with having been under several feet of Schyulkill River water from the weekend flood.

The last descriptor is exactly why it was the center of photographic attention by those rubberneckers who flocked to the Sunoco A-Plus parking lot to witness the hurricane-related flooding last weekend. So, what’s its deal?

  • WHYY thanks our sponsors — become a WHYY sponsor

The Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Service’s Community Life Improvement Programs (CLIP) offers an online form to report such abandoned vehicles. However, a Police Department spokesperson said there is no record of an abandoned-car complaint or report on the block as of Tuesday night.

The CLIP site states that “after we receive your report and confirm the information, we are required by law to contact the vehicle’s owner and inform them that their vehicle is considered abandoned.

“Additionally, we must provide them with eleven (11) days to remove the automobile from the highway before we are authorized to tow it. … Please note that we no longer affix blaze orange ‘Abandoned Vehicle’ stickers to reported abandoned automobiles.”

Is that your car, still sitting there Wednesday morning sans blaze-orange sticker? We’d love to hear from you to properly eulogize its public demise before the PD has a private tow company come haul it away. Call (215) 351-1200 and ask for NewsWorks.

WHYY is your source for fact-based, in-depth journalism and information. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on financial support from readers like you. Please give today.

Want a digest of WHYY’s programs, events & stories? Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Together we can reach 100% of WHYY’s fiscal year goal