Springfield drivers woke up Wednesday to a harsh reality: their cars took a beating, and getting them fixed is going to take a lot longer than anyone wants to hear. Tuesday’s hail storm tore through the city around midday, and the damage it left behind is being described by insurance companies as nothing short of catastrophic, in the most official sense of that word.
Hammer’s Autoworks on West Chestnut Expressway became ground zero for the chaos. The shop logged more than 1,000 phone calls in the 24 hours following the storm, and that number was still climbing into Wednesday morning. The parking lot, which was already full of vehicles waiting on routine repairs, ended up looking like a windshield graveyard, with broken glass scattered across the property and cars that arrived for minor fixes now considered total losses.
What makes this situation especially rough is that the storm did not spare the shop itself. Vehicles that customers had already dropped off for unrelated work sustained major hail damage while sitting on the lot. That is not exactly the phone call anyone wants to get from their mechanic…