The story behind an Outer Banks house that collapsed into the ocean
www.ncrabbithole.com
Who owned it? Why didn't anybody move it or tear it down? Why is it there? And who has to clean it up? We've teamed up with the Island Free Press to answer questions big and small about a viral video.
Thank you so much for this article. It is well researched, clear and concise. I visited this house several years ago when it was owned by my recently deceased sister-in-law. I remember having to climb off the first story deck through deep sand. It seemed to take forever to actually get to the ocean-I was amazed at the size of the beach front! I truly could not believe it was the same property in the video. Thank you again for clarifying the situation.
I’d never actually seen a cottage get sallowed by the ocean. The video amazing and very sad. My parents purchased an lot in Avon in 1971 (one back from ocean front, realtor told my father he didn’t look like an oceanfront person). The next year my parents purchased that oceanfront lot. Sadly my father got see the cottage my mother had built on that oceanfront property. Hopefully, he watched my twins, his grandchildren have amazing adventures at the beach and all of the Outer Banks (they learned to watch for cars on the beach, which their thought was so funny).My mother would stay from November until April (prior to rentals). She met many people, which enabled me to take my children to see where the locals hug out. There was a time my took the cottage off the rental program and we spent late spring & all summer at the cottage. That was amazing, thankfully my children many the things they became involved in. Took art classes with with Miss Marta, playing local children, riding a horse through the Buxton woods to the Beach (think it was Buxton).
Watching that home get washed out to sea, made me think about our cottage washing away. Of I have no idea of the history of that cottage, yet I image at one time it was special to its original family. The island has changed so much since my parents first chose to vacation in Avon. The house they’d rented for 2 weeks had no AC & I can remember how terribly hot it was (no ocean breeze for our time there). Nothing really to do, although we did go to the movie place (it was really old), visited the one store for food & whatever else we might need (if they had it). My father & I did a lot of walking. We found an abandoned Coast Guard Station. Someone had abandoned several kittens there. Only one was alive, I begged my father to take back with us (your mother with have a fit). I took that black kitten back to our rental cottage (walking along the beach with the kitten crying the entire time). Took him back home to PA & a friend took him in. We’d named that little boy, ‘Tar’ he was the sweetest thing ever.
Sadly, the island is suffering the effects of global warming and its frightening to think of its future.
"Barrier islands are designed to move in response to storms and rising sea levels. In fact, Dr. Stanly Riggs, a coastal geologist at East Carolina University, says about 20,000 years ago North Carolina’s Atlantic coastline was 15 to 40 miles east of the current coast. That’s because so much water was locked up in ice sheets that sea level was 400 feet lower than it is today.
Riggs estimates some form of barrier islands first appeared off the coast about 7,000 years ago, as the seas began to rise after most of that ice had melted. The islands moved naturally westward and, as sea level rise slowed, the current version of the famous Outer Banks’ barrier islands began forming about 2,000 years ago.
The movement is gradual. As storms slice through narrow, low-lying islands, the ocean water dumps sand on the western side of the islands. All the while, wind and waves constantly move sand across the island. As the ocean side erodes and the sound — or western side — grows, the islands move westward. The islands slowly roll over themselves."
I remember studying this in Geology coursed years ago at ECU.
I asked my Dad, who was a carpenter, why he didn't build us a beach house. he said " Never build more house than you can afford to lose. And I can't afford to lose one". Forget hiway 12 let it go. people can take ferries to the parts of the OBX that become Islands. Works for Ocracoke. And the highspeed passenger ferry test worked too. Quit pumping sand if it increases erosion down the beach. the OBX is a sandbar.
One cause of the receding shorelines that I haven’t heard anyone mention is that all that sand was there because of the logging and mining and clearing of farmland. We’ve slowed the erosion of the land and that has cut back on the amount of sand delivered to the coastline by the rivers.
Speaking of plants and trees on the island I was a a relative of mine still living and he said that ALL of the plants/trees we currently see are not native to the island. He is 103 years old and remembers planting with his father. The sound has to relieve itself in bad hurricanes by washing over the barrier islands. Man has changed that.
I have only ventured to the outer banks a few times. Loved every visit. Stayed on the lower end on Portsmouth Island, Ocracoke and camped there for years. Each trip showed a change after all the storms ate up the beach with erosion. In March '98 we stayed a week doing a ham radio event and we were welcomed with a "Lil Ole Mullet Blow" as the ferry man, with a very outer banks accent, called it. We had 74 MPH winds for one day and it was not classified as a hurricane because of the numbers. It had to be 75 mph to be a hurricane. We begged to differ. And we survived. The beach did not though. We stayed at the Alger Willis Fish Camp and it was a life changing experience. I wrote a story about our stay and all the fun and desperation while we were there. Aptly I named it "Lil 'Ole Mullet Blow". After the storm passed we were gifted with new beaches to explore and we saw cars and trucks from the 30', 40's and 50's unearthed on the beaches that were previously covered with sand. When I was a lot younger in the 60's when I was stationed at Pungo, VA in the Coast Guard I ventured down the Outer Banks on several occasions to just go find a place to get something to eat and see the sites. It was beautiful and there was more beach and less houses back then. But, then all the beaches up and down the NC and SC coast have been eaten up by housing, large condo units and people who want to stay at the beach in the warm months. Life goes on and the beaches keep disappearing. What can I say. Mother nature claims what she wants!
Does the homeowner receive any compensation from insurance or other sources? Does their property just cease to exist along with property tax obligations?
They needed to remove them before they fell in causing 15 miles of dangerous situations for wildlife and people on the beaches along there. That is ignorance. And the remaining houses need to be removed ASAP. and if they fall in t he owners fined $100,000.
Rodanthe is not getting beach nourishment, now nor in the future. Dare County has made that clear. Their position remains clear that nourishment projects are justified only to protect cirtical infrastructure, i.e. HWY 12. As soon as the jug-handle bridge was completed in Rodanthe, Hwy12 along that portion of oceanfront no longer needs to be protected. The Buxton and Avon beach nourishment projects coming up this summer are only happening order to protect the critical infrastructure of Hwy 12, not personal property. Hope that makes sense.
It looks like the owners of the wooden beach houses do not want to actually save their houses from collapsing so they are allowing the ocean waves to collapse and destroy them?? BY simply filling one tonne bags with sand from the beach and using a machine to lift them into position they can place one tonne sand bags in front of and around their wooden houses as a wave barrier to stop the waves from destroying the wooded supports. The wooden supports need bracing with extra diagonals and horizontal timbers to make a ridged frame support system to prevent the supports from collapsing then their houses will last many more years! extra timber supports. or ideally they can also use large bolder rocks as wave breakers! USA construction??? not the best construction really! gone fishing!
It looks like the owners of the wooden beach houses do not want to actually save their houses from collapsing so they are allowing the ocean waves to collapse and destroy them?? BY simply filling one tonne bags with sand from the beach and using a machine to lift them into position they can place one tonne sand bags in front of and around their wooden houses as a wave barrier to stop the waves from destroying the wooded supports. The wooden supports need bracing with extra diagonals and horizontal timbers to make a ridged frame support system to prevent the supports from collapsing then their houses will last many more years! extra timber supports. or ideally they can also use large bolder rocks as wave breakers! USA construction??? not the best construction really! gone fishing!
Thank you so much for this article. It is well researched, clear and concise. I visited this house several years ago when it was owned by my recently deceased sister-in-law. I remember having to climb off the first story deck through deep sand. It seemed to take forever to actually get to the ocean-I was amazed at the size of the beach front! I truly could not believe it was the same property in the video. Thank you again for clarifying the situation.
I’d never actually seen a cottage get sallowed by the ocean. The video amazing and very sad. My parents purchased an lot in Avon in 1971 (one back from ocean front, realtor told my father he didn’t look like an oceanfront person). The next year my parents purchased that oceanfront lot. Sadly my father got see the cottage my mother had built on that oceanfront property. Hopefully, he watched my twins, his grandchildren have amazing adventures at the beach and all of the Outer Banks (they learned to watch for cars on the beach, which their thought was so funny).My mother would stay from November until April (prior to rentals). She met many people, which enabled me to take my children to see where the locals hug out. There was a time my took the cottage off the rental program and we spent late spring & all summer at the cottage. That was amazing, thankfully my children many the things they became involved in. Took art classes with with Miss Marta, playing local children, riding a horse through the Buxton woods to the Beach (think it was Buxton).
Watching that home get washed out to sea, made me think about our cottage washing away. Of I have no idea of the history of that cottage, yet I image at one time it was special to its original family. The island has changed so much since my parents first chose to vacation in Avon. The house they’d rented for 2 weeks had no AC & I can remember how terribly hot it was (no ocean breeze for our time there). Nothing really to do, although we did go to the movie place (it was really old), visited the one store for food & whatever else we might need (if they had it). My father & I did a lot of walking. We found an abandoned Coast Guard Station. Someone had abandoned several kittens there. Only one was alive, I begged my father to take back with us (your mother with have a fit). I took that black kitten back to our rental cottage (walking along the beach with the kitten crying the entire time). Took him back home to PA & a friend took him in. We’d named that little boy, ‘Tar’ he was the sweetest thing ever.
Sadly, the island is suffering the effects of global warming and its frightening to think of its future.
Great article! I so appreciate you clarifying the situation as there are so many misconceptions swarming around.
From a good article at http://science.unctv.org/content/changing-outer-banks
"Barrier islands are designed to move in response to storms and rising sea levels. In fact, Dr. Stanly Riggs, a coastal geologist at East Carolina University, says about 20,000 years ago North Carolina’s Atlantic coastline was 15 to 40 miles east of the current coast. That’s because so much water was locked up in ice sheets that sea level was 400 feet lower than it is today.
Riggs estimates some form of barrier islands first appeared off the coast about 7,000 years ago, as the seas began to rise after most of that ice had melted. The islands moved naturally westward and, as sea level rise slowed, the current version of the famous Outer Banks’ barrier islands began forming about 2,000 years ago.
The movement is gradual. As storms slice through narrow, low-lying islands, the ocean water dumps sand on the western side of the islands. All the while, wind and waves constantly move sand across the island. As the ocean side erodes and the sound — or western side — grows, the islands move westward. The islands slowly roll over themselves."
I remember studying this in Geology coursed years ago at ECU.
Very interesting. Thank you.
I asked my Dad, who was a carpenter, why he didn't build us a beach house. he said " Never build more house than you can afford to lose. And I can't afford to lose one". Forget hiway 12 let it go. people can take ferries to the parts of the OBX that become Islands. Works for Ocracoke. And the highspeed passenger ferry test worked too. Quit pumping sand if it increases erosion down the beach. the OBX is a sandbar.
One cause of the receding shorelines that I haven’t heard anyone mention is that all that sand was there because of the logging and mining and clearing of farmland. We’ve slowed the erosion of the land and that has cut back on the amount of sand delivered to the coastline by the rivers.
Speaking of plants and trees on the island I was a a relative of mine still living and he said that ALL of the plants/trees we currently see are not native to the island. He is 103 years old and remembers planting with his father. The sound has to relieve itself in bad hurricanes by washing over the barrier islands. Man has changed that.
I have only ventured to the outer banks a few times. Loved every visit. Stayed on the lower end on Portsmouth Island, Ocracoke and camped there for years. Each trip showed a change after all the storms ate up the beach with erosion. In March '98 we stayed a week doing a ham radio event and we were welcomed with a "Lil Ole Mullet Blow" as the ferry man, with a very outer banks accent, called it. We had 74 MPH winds for one day and it was not classified as a hurricane because of the numbers. It had to be 75 mph to be a hurricane. We begged to differ. And we survived. The beach did not though. We stayed at the Alger Willis Fish Camp and it was a life changing experience. I wrote a story about our stay and all the fun and desperation while we were there. Aptly I named it "Lil 'Ole Mullet Blow". After the storm passed we were gifted with new beaches to explore and we saw cars and trucks from the 30', 40's and 50's unearthed on the beaches that were previously covered with sand. When I was a lot younger in the 60's when I was stationed at Pungo, VA in the Coast Guard I ventured down the Outer Banks on several occasions to just go find a place to get something to eat and see the sites. It was beautiful and there was more beach and less houses back then. But, then all the beaches up and down the NC and SC coast have been eaten up by housing, large condo units and people who want to stay at the beach in the warm months. Life goes on and the beaches keep disappearing. What can I say. Mother nature claims what she wants!
Does the homeowner receive any compensation from insurance or other sources? Does their property just cease to exist along with property tax obligations?
They needed to remove them before they fell in causing 15 miles of dangerous situations for wildlife and people on the beaches along there. That is ignorance. And the remaining houses need to be removed ASAP. and if they fall in t he owners fined $100,000.
Rodanthe is not getting beach nourishment, now nor in the future. Dare County has made that clear. Their position remains clear that nourishment projects are justified only to protect cirtical infrastructure, i.e. HWY 12. As soon as the jug-handle bridge was completed in Rodanthe, Hwy12 along that portion of oceanfront no longer needs to be protected. The Buxton and Avon beach nourishment projects coming up this summer are only happening order to protect the critical infrastructure of Hwy 12, not personal property. Hope that makes sense.
Yes the climate is changing but there is no evidence that they are more frequent or worse storms.
It looks like the owners of the wooden beach houses do not want to actually save their houses from collapsing so they are allowing the ocean waves to collapse and destroy them?? BY simply filling one tonne bags with sand from the beach and using a machine to lift them into position they can place one tonne sand bags in front of and around their wooden houses as a wave barrier to stop the waves from destroying the wooded supports. The wooden supports need bracing with extra diagonals and horizontal timbers to make a ridged frame support system to prevent the supports from collapsing then their houses will last many more years! extra timber supports. or ideally they can also use large bolder rocks as wave breakers! USA construction??? not the best construction really! gone fishing!
It looks like the owners of the wooden beach houses do not want to actually save their houses from collapsing so they are allowing the ocean waves to collapse and destroy them?? BY simply filling one tonne bags with sand from the beach and using a machine to lift them into position they can place one tonne sand bags in front of and around their wooden houses as a wave barrier to stop the waves from destroying the wooded supports. The wooden supports need bracing with extra diagonals and horizontal timbers to make a ridged frame support system to prevent the supports from collapsing then their houses will last many more years! extra timber supports. or ideally they can also use large bolder rocks as wave breakers! USA construction??? not the best construction really! gone fishing!
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