Four homes have been condemned in the OBX a day after another one collapse. Photo: Screenshot//YouTube
Four homes in Rodanthe have been condemned after yet another house in North Carolina’s Outer Banks collapsed into the ocean.
Although Noah Gillam, the Dare County Planning Director, wouldn’t directly say that the condemned homes might collapse as well, the houses were “decertified for occupancy” just one day after an oceanfront house on East Point Drive ended up in the water.
This is not the first time houses on the beach in the Outer Banks have been knocked down by beach erosion. It’s a beautiful zone, full of amazing waves that people like Brett Barley routinely enjoy, but living in a house on stilts directly on the sand comes with an inherent danger.
According to reports, the homes were condemned because the the wastewater systems were damaged and the entrances and exits have been drastically changed as the beach disappears. In 2022, after another home fell over and made an enormous mess, the National Park Service began sounding the alarm that the Cape Hatteras National Seashore is facing the prospect of becoming nearly unlivable in the coming months and years.
Some estimates say that the beaches in Rodanthe are eroding at a staggering rate of up to 12 feet a year. Beach replenishment projects are top of mind, but the cost of pumping sand from offshore onto the beach are prohibitive and temporary, so some homeowners with the means to pick up their houses and move them farther back from the approaching shoreline are already doing so.
It’s a tough pill to swallow for many of the residents there that have lived in the region for years and aren’t able to go anywhere else – and solutions are limited.
Since the early eighties, North Carolina sea levels have risen about three inches. “Coastal erosion costs around half a billion dollars each year in the form of deteriorated structures and land that is lost to the rising ocean,” CNN reported.
But Dare County officials have a responsibility to ensure that the homes in the area are indeed livable, so homeowners are often given code violation notices with instructions to correct them as soon as possible.
After the most recent collapse, officials are asking the public to be cautious in the area, since the debris is scattered along the beach. On March 14, a day after the house broke apart, officials began the difficult task of carting away the pieces of it.
“In an effort to protect Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s natural resources and help ensure the safety of visitors, the National Park Service began cleaning the beach [Tuesday] morning,” said Mike Barber with the National Park Service. It’s likely that a the Park Service will ask the public for help in the coming days in the form of a volunteer beach cleanup.
