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| "Skybox," a house on the shore in Rondanthe, North Carolina that has been teetering for days, finally collapsed into the waves Friday evening. Photo via Facebook Wes Snyder Photography. |
Later on Thursday, an eighth house fell in. Like many of the other homes, this one was widely caught on video.
One video, by Brett Barley I found to be quite striking. It really brings home the sense of loss and sadness in the Outer Banks as climate change teams up with a naturally unstable barrier island to create a slow motion disaster.
I'll link to it on the bottom of this post.
A ninth house known as "Skybox", collapsed in nearby Rodanthe, North Carolina last evening, bringing to 21 the number of houses lost to the rising sea over the past five years.
Skybox had been teetering for days, and local residents were impressed by it resilience, despite being battered by hurricane swells for days.
Several other houses look ready to go in the inevitable next hurricane or nor'easter
The collapses over the past five years are often taking place under clear, balmy skies. Gorgeous weather, except for the falling houses. It's often been distant storms hurling powerful swells into the Outer Banks that have caused the destruction.
In Barley's video, you can see a large crowd had gathered just behind a big debris field left by the other homes that fell to the waves. It was a somber crowd, without the kinds of hoots and hollers you get the people watch other dramatic moments.
Barley explains why in the note below the YouTube video:
"The majority of these homes were built buy locales, they are maintained by locals, the visitors who come and stay in them support the local economy. They are more than 'just someone's rental property.' They are a part of this community regardless of who owns it.
They have helped put food on the table for may families here over and and over again. They have made memories for those who came and stay.... weddings, birthdays, honeymoons, family vacations, etc. They are part of the memories of those who live here and work/play amongst the beach and neighborhoods they make up."
Much like the case of Skybox, people root for other clearly doomed houses. Part of us always want to deny the inevitable.
When the house in Barley's video first collapses, it bumps in a large green house next door, which is also being battered by the swells from the two distant hurricanes. You can see the green house is in rough shape, and could go at any time. The porches are askew, and you can detect a slight lean toward the ocean. One of the main pilings is badly cracked.
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| Comparison photo showing homes in Buxton, North Carolina a decade ago and this week. The erosion has been incredible. Photo via Facebook, Edward Sneed. |
Meanwhile the house that collapsed in the video slowly breaks apart. The first floor was partially crushed in the immediate crash, and the waves take apart the rest of the lower walls. The second floor briefly stays intact, which is what we've seen in previous collapse videos from the Outer Banks.
The video lingers on how pieces of somebody's life come apart with each wave. A striped couch and matching chairs suddenly bob in the waves. Then a refrigerator floats out of the house
As the house is slowly disintegrates, it starts out to the left of the green house, and the waves take it front of that green house, and finally leave the wreckage to the right of the green house. The collapsed house never really hits the green house after the initial bump.
But sure enough, we'll one day, probably soon, see video of the green house collapsing, or the wreckage of it floating in the surf.
The collapsed houses are an enormous mess, of course. The debris - wood, broken glass, nails, potentially toxic insulation and other materials, spread along for miles of beach.
Crews were moving in fast to remove the wreckage, but the waves are faster. All the Outer Banks collapse videos this week show debris spreading far and wide.
I've seen a lot of talk about people being dumb to build houses right on the water. But the houses that just collapsed in North Carolina actually used to be at least a block or two inland from the beach.
One person who commented on Barley's video said they rented the house that collapsed a year ago. They said at the time, the house seemed quite stable, despite a strong storm they experiences while staying there.
Rising sea levels inevitably change the shape of the seacoast, and this is what you get.
In North Carolina, a 2024 report stated that 750 of nearly 8,800 oceanfront structures are at risk from erosion. Dealing with this is expensive. Reinforcing the shore with dredged sand or rock is expensive. So is using state or federal funds to buy out the threatened homes and demolish them before the waves do.
We're going to see more and more of this, not just in North Carolina, but up and down the East Coast as those sea levels rise and storms get more intense with climate change. Meanwhile, people are still flocking to the seacoast.
This is going to be part of a very costly depressing future.
VIDEO
Video of a house collapsing into the water Thursday in Buxton, North Carolina and then gradually disintegrating . Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.
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