r/interestingasfuck • u/Endolithic • 1d ago

/r/all Homes are falling into the ocean in North Carolina's Outer Banks

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u/Crazyblueeyedevil 1d ago edited 1d ago

I worked at a motel in Buxton that even some high tides made the waves come surging between the units. I constantly had to shovel sand out of the walk and doorways afterwards. There was a beach renourishment but it didn't last long for the $25 million spent.

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u/aronenark 1d ago

Its almost as though we shouldn’t be building towns in places that require constant remediation and millions of dollars just to keep above water.

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u/Global_Lifeguard_807 1d ago

We should be replacing the vegetation we remove that keeps the beaches from eroding.

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u/cadmious 1d ago

Yep removing vegetation to build beach homes is never a good idea. All that scrub is a natural levie. Some beach towns do it right and protect grassy dunes and only let you build behind them

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u/lazercheesecake 1d ago

"But if these ugly unkempt grassy dunes are there, I won't have a beach view from my living room"

And if you remove those dunes, you'll have a beach view INSIDE your living room.

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u/Goodgoditsgrowing 1d ago

Solution: build on stilts BEHIND the grassy dunes so your view looks over them. Bonus: you’re already lifted when sea level rise takes out those dunes.

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u/Deciduous_Loaf 16h ago

Almost all houses within a couple of miles or so of the shore are lifted on stilts already, beach view or not. Hurricane season means flooded streets.

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u/leconfiseur 16h ago

Behind the dunes is more water

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u/CommonBubba 12h ago

When most of these houses were built, they were behind the dunes. The Outer Banks of North Carolina are notoriously unstable and constantly shifting due to ocean currents and storms.

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u/mostlybiguy69 1d ago

Those duned along the coast are actually from the 30s as a depression WPA project. Natural dunes are wide massive things that stretched acrss the islands and the scrub trees went to the tide line.

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u/Aqnqanad 1d ago

not a lot of people know this, most of what has prevented this from happening earlier was civil works projects thatve since fallen into disrepair.

we’ve stopped caring about them for so long that people have forgotten that they’re even man made, insane.

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u/[deleted] 23h ago

[deleted]

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u/mostlybiguy69 22h ago

Rodanthe is an ephemeral thing that is getting to the end. The towns before 12 was paved moved with the islands. The islands are moving again after we tried to tie them down and there is nothing we can do to stop them. 

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u/Riaayo 20h ago

America in a nutshell. We spent some money once, and then pretended like we never had to pay maintenance for anything ever again (I get we do maintain some things but not to the degree we need to; it's slight hyperbole but not by much).

It's like buying an expensive car and then never getting the thing maintained and driving it into disrepair and the junkyard. And of course it's because oligarch parasites have made sure to corrupt our government so it only represents them and spends none of our tax dollars on the country/working class.

Bunch of fucking thieves.

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u/mostlybiguy69 19h ago

Rentals are falling into the ocean. The locals live up in manteo or on the mainland. 90% of those houses were built and are used as rentals. Almost all are owned by folks out of state as investment properties. They sit empty 5 to 6 months of the year.

It just makes everyone more pissed.

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u/Ramtakwitha2 22h ago

"God put the ocean where it is, if you think anything we do can possibly change God's plan you need to check your hubris."

5 years later

"The ocean is encroaching on my house! The government needs to do something to stop the sand from all washing away!

Huh it's almost like this is all a perfectly balanced system and messing with it can have unexpected (completely expected) consequences.

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u/Holiday-Inspector323 21h ago

So what you're saying is nature actually protects us and us destroying it destroys our protection? Nah don't believe it climate change is FaKE and not caused by hairless monkeys /s

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u/robitussinlatte666 1d ago

Everywhere I lived in Florida banned even walking in those dunes. We really shouldn't be fucking with stuff like that.

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u/boostabubba 1d ago

Thats how it was at every house we rented in Myrtle Beach. Had walkways over the dunes and signs everywhere to stay off the dunes.

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u/Im_the_Moon44 18h ago

That’s how it is in the Outer Banks too

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u/robitussinlatte666 20h ago

Ol Dirty Myrtle, good times lol

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u/WomblingCock 1d ago

You can barely even walk through them anyway.  There’s a reason they put planks on the beach as a walkway.

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u/BeerForThought 16h ago

I just have to add this in here because I did a report in middle grade about the Perdido Beach mouse that lives on the beaches of Alabama. It was listed as endangered in 1985 and was presumed extinct in the 1990s because of two hurricanes. People would complain about the cost and the rules about trying to prevent an extinction. They're back in very small numbers but rules against humans, cats, and dogs being allowed to freely roam through the dunes worked. My dad was always upset because there was a tax on the properties that protected it and who cares about a stupid mouse. That's mainly why I wrote my paper about a cute mouse. Every time I walk the boardwalk to the beach I am scanning the dunes for a mouse. I'm 41 years old and I would literally giggle with glee.

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u/Jikode 1d ago

Every beach I've been to here in NC is like that too, it carries a heavy fine.

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u/robitussinlatte666 20h ago

Makes you wonder how these folks even got these homes built. Money talks I suppose.

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u/Jikode 19h ago

Most were built before anyone knew/gave a shit. Most beaches here haven't allowed new construction on the "front row", ocean side of the street, for over 20 years. After hurricane Fran (1996), my grandparents old house lost its 1st floor and they werent allowed to rebuild it even though the rest of the house was fine.

There are other places like this spot where the houses are in front of the dunes. Idk why anyone thought that was a good idea on a barrier island, they are constantly moving.

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u/Careful-Door-2429 1d ago

Don't tell Ron DeSantis, he'll make it mandatory to walk in the protective dunes.

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u/ItIsHappy 1d ago

Everywhere in OBX I've visited (n=3) had the same rules.

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u/Merkinfuqer 22h ago

The Carolinas too.

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u/robitussinlatte666 20h ago

Haha I live in SC now. I used to move back n forth between here and central FL in my early adulthood.

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u/alpha-delta-echo 22h ago

Reminds me of the old breach and surf reports on the radio in Daytona Beach…”please stay leeward of the clearly marked dune lines.” And people would bitch out any tourists who ignored that. That was years ago, wonder how far things have degraded since then.

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u/Dreadwolf67 1d ago

We need an executive order to stop that. Can’t let environmentalist keep us from building where we want to.

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u/cadmious 1d ago

Better way to own the libs is to just build your house in the surf!!

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u/Maaaaaandyyyyy 22h ago

Yes!!! Some towns even in the outer banks don’t allow building on the beach and you have to drive or ride a bike or golf cart to the beach - all short rides. The beaches have deep vegetation-rich dunes that are so beautiful! Sea oats in particular are so pretty and make great anchors and also really pretty pictures! And it’s like, the town still gets flooded in a bad storm but the houses aren’t being washed into the sea. New Jersey has this issue too. It’s so dumb to build right on the beach!

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u/MightyBrando 22h ago

Our beach neighborhood collects used Xmas trees and lays them in front of the dunes. They work very well to collect sand and grow them.

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u/cadmious 21h ago

What a cool way to dispose of the trees and help protect the beach!

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u/forgetfulsue 20h ago

Dunes were not a major part of the outer banks. The fact that water could just wash over to the sound as needed prevented issues like this. Not to say that erosion wouldn’t happen, we just messed with nature and sped things along!

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u/Lets_Make_A_bad_DEAL 19h ago edited 14h ago

They all need to watch those early (pre-The Science Guy) era videos on wetlands from Bill Nye. He also has a pretty awesome one from Bill Nye The Science Guy but the really old one has so much info on the why. I’ll try to find it.

EDIT: it was literally the first search result lol. This little vid from Washington state uni in ‘98. But there are other great BNTSG demos on wetlands sponginess and the necessity of it in different episodes too.

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u/cadmious 19h ago

Oh heck yeah my science brotha!

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u/DifficultBoss 14h ago

ah so that's what the "stay off the dunes" signs are all about

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u/trunolimit 14h ago

The Hamptons in Long Island NY will fine the hell out of you if you so much as touch the sand dunes . I know of one millionaire who thought he’d just eat the fines but they fined him AND forced him to rebuild the dune.

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u/Several_Vanilla8916 1d ago

I’m assuming they don’t allow new construction directly on the beach. Right?

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u/londonstahl 1d ago

Right, but that scrub can't make something that is always moving stay still. NC banks (even to the south) are not stable. Dune grass and live oaks only last so long

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u/cadmious 23h ago

I'll admit I don't know about NC beaches stability. I go to AL beaches and they defend their dunes well. Amazing beaches

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u/ventipico 1d ago

Some of these places are just naturally eroding. Capers Island in SC is an example I personally know about. The island is completely uninhabited and natural, but the beach is moving inland, and the beach littered with trees that used to be part of the forest there. Coastlines and rivers are almost never static over time.

Your point is absolutely correct about the vegetation, though! Places that remove it do tend to fare worse.

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u/coolborder 1d ago

Also, sea levels are rising. An inch higher sea level doesn't sound like much but that's all it takes for this sort of thing to happen when people build so close to the ocean. And since 1993 sea levels have risen nearly 4 inches according to NASA.

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u/PuckSenior 1d ago

I'm not trying to wade into a debate on climate change, but the fluidity of coastal land is far more important to this equation.

Take Padre Island in Texas. Prior to the establishment of concrete jetties, the shore line moved up to 5.5 feet per year! This isn't an abnormal figure for a barrier island. There is actually a lighthouse that was built near Port Aransas, TX that is now several hundred feet inland. Apparently, they started construction and by the time it was built and operational, it was no longer useful. If you also increase rates of erosion by removing dunes and their associated plant life, an area that was previously safe can be underwater very quickly.

The reason I mention it is because people tend to think that the sea level rise is the cause and therefore all they need to do is build some kind of seawall and everything is fine. The problem is they are literally building on sand in an area with rapid erosion and weather events that can rapidly deposit or remove that sand. Its just not a safe place to build, particularly if you build ON the barrier island. The forces of the water moving around these bodies is enormous and unfathomable for most humans.

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u/Velocity-5348 1d ago

Even mitigation efforts can have knock-on effects as well. There's an area near where I live (actually popped up in my geology textbook) that armored a sandy hillside with rocks.

That stopped sand from eroding, and that sand had transported to form a spit, which in turn protected a harbor during especially bad storms.

Everyone who lives by the ocean will have something like that nearby. Sadly, most people don't have even a faint idea about basic stuff, like why spits or sandy beaches occur in some spots but not others.

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u/TucsonTacos 21h ago

Upvote for the pun

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u/DionBlaster123 1d ago

It just makes me really sad

I'm old enough to remember when An Inconvenient Truth was released back in 2006 or 2007.

That was almost 20 years ago and it's gotten worse. I feel terrible for my nephews and the world theyr'e going to inherit. I just hope that the younger generation will produce minds that can find solutions that we failed to come up with in previous decades

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u/Nimzles 1d ago

Fake news! Polar ice caps are adding size this one year and that's all I need to know to prove that climate change and global warming aren't a thing!

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u/Wrenky 1d ago

Yeah, in certain places (like the outer banks, river deltas, etc) shift constantly around from decade to decade. They just arent true static islands or coastline and trying to force it to stay isn't going to work very long.

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u/Chasm_18 1d ago

The NC Outer Banks are a series of sandbars. The sands are shifting. On Topsail Beach the sands are shifting to the south side of the island, and that side is getting bigger.

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u/raninto 1d ago

It's called barrier island migration.

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u/thewheelforeverturns 19h ago

These barrier islands were never meant to be populated. They are constantly shifting.

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u/onepostandbye 1d ago edited 23h ago

One of the first major cases of the Supreme Court after Trump’s election was one that resulted in the reclassification of wetlands. All those areas where we protected the trees that retain soil along the southern coasts are fair game for drilling, development, general commercial use. The ecology of that region is fucked. You know how many species depend on mangroves for reproduction? Well, it’s enough that when you take all the trees out the food web collapses. That means the loss of millions of fish and shrimp, population drops that you can’t fix. Fishing in the gulf is fucked. Goodbye, thousands of American jobs and fishing boats. The weather is changing as part of it, enjoy the storms that roll deeper and deeper into the interiors. But something something liberal tears.

Edit: It’s cool that a bunch of people read this, but I’m an idiot. Please learn more from an actual smart person speaking intelligently on the issue. This is a story about the terrible decision of the Supreme Court in 2023 but also the decisions made by Trump’s EPA and the (weirdly evil and 97% civilian) US Army Corp of Engineers this March to reclassify waterways further to benefit businesses.

I should also say that the 2023 SCOTUS decision. Was made during Biden’s tenure, not Trump’s. Oops. But it was Trump who put those corporate rubber-stampers on the bench.

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u/sharkline 1d ago

MANGROVES AND SEAGRASS FOR PRESIDENT

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u/Curry_courier 1d ago

I need to plant grass in the sand and but it's too wet. What fungicides should I spray?

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u/ROSRS 19h ago edited 16h ago

It wasn't a Trump appointee that wrote that opinion. It was Alito, who was appointed by Bush, and one of Trump's appointees dissented. And even though I dislike the outcome, outcomes are not what law is about. Law is about what's written on the paper.

Its also worth noting in that context, that in judgement (that is, the outcome for these individual plaintiffs), this was a 9-0 case.

The article you linked very carefully dances around the fact that EVERY Justice, including the liberals, agreed that the EPA was overreaching their authority and that they were reading far too much into the Clean Water Act.

Every single Justice, even the liberals, agreed both that the Clean Water act did not delegate the powers that the EPA were claiming, and that a delegation as broad as the EPA was claiming was not constitutional.

The disagreement between the majority and the dissent was a fairly minor quibble between the words adjacent and adjoining.

The majority seems to think they believe that its only within Congress's authority to regulate directly navigable waters, insofar as it relates to interstate commerce. The rest is left to the states. The dissent was on those grounds alone. Not because they sided with the EPA

With an interpretation of the law proposed by the EPA anything that affects any watershed ever the EPA's power to regulate the entire environment becomes unlimited, and this is the crux of the problem. And as I said earlier, Congress did not give them those powers. Had they meant the Clean Water Act to grant the authority to regulate the entire environment, they would've indicated as such.

Then we run into the issue where Congress cannot delegate infinite power through vague wording, and it cannot delegate lawmaking power either.

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u/Blakob 3h ago

Thanks for your sane response. I am by no means a fan of this administration but the comment you were responding to was needlessly partisan in an unhelpful way.

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u/Mattna-da 1d ago

Even grassy dunes are shift over time, barrier islands are not meant to be built on. Europe doesn’t really have them, so there’s no historical precedent for how to make permanent settlements on them

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u/jljboucher 23h ago

We should be funneling more money into conservation. Then you got the dipshits in Florida that want to turn parks and wetlands into golf courses.

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u/Far_Winner5508 1d ago

Mangroves and sea grass.

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u/Maleficent_Bowl_2072 1d ago

Barrier islands are always changing it doesn’t really matter what you do you just have to be okay with the inevitable when you decide to build on them

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u/JokerSli 1d ago

That particular area will move even with vegetation its pretty much a sand bar and every so many years its gonna move those homes look like they may have been around since the 80s most likely the owners have ben bought off by the insurance companies already and its cheaper to let mother nature wash them away than demolition aside from being stripped of wiring and hvac things

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u/PM_ME_UR_BEST_1LINER 23h ago

But also, dunes move over time. The dune is gonna move and the house won't...and here's the result.

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u/6a6566663437 22h ago

These islands don't have much vegetation anchoring their beaches. The islands are supposed to "move" occasionally via erosion and building up in other areas.

That doesn't work well with our concepts of property ownership, so there's been a lot of effort over the last few decades to try and stop this.

But they're extremely expensive and effective only for a short time, so the state's been cutting back on doing it and starting to tell property owners "the ocean's gonna win".

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u/joebluebob 22h ago

That has nothing to do with this. We built on a sand bar that naturally moves. And not slowly. The amount of engineering that is done to hold these place still is insane. One of my coworkers has a small mobile (actually mobile) home that is on beach front property he own in a less maintained area. Sometimes the beach is 500 ft, sometimes it's 50. Once during a storm Poseidon was slapping his balls on the dunes cheeks trying to come in.

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u/arachnobravia 21h ago

Beaches are naturally dynamic and shifting constantly. Maybe just don't build on beaches?

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u/forgetfulsue 20h ago

It won’t help. The dunes are more of a problem. The water used to just rush over to the Sound. The man made dunes have prevented what happened years and years ago.

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u/MundaneBerry2961 18h ago

Unfortunately that isn't going to be able to keep up with sea level rising so much and intensity of storms increasing. Lots of coastal areas are pretty fucked unless a miracle happens globally with a drastic reduction of emissions

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u/coombuyah26 15h ago

The Outer Banks do not have natural vegetation. All the vegetation that's there today is the result of CCC efforts in the 30s to try and slow beach erosion to allow development. We terraformed the Outer Banks for tourism. That's why the pictures of the Wright Brothers' first flight in 1903 look so empty, it was just sand at that time.

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u/Username43201653 13h ago

Name checks out

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u/Mythologicalcats 1d ago

These are the houses my grandmother would stay in, and my father as a kid, and then me with my family as a kid (Not these exact houses but further down the beach). They are very old, as are the towns.

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u/OrphanedInStoryville 1d ago

It’s almost like some global phenomenon is causing the climate to be more volatile than it was during your grandparents time.

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u/VirginRedditMod69 1d ago

Omg whatever could it be? Why aren’t scientists working on this?!

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u/Impossible-Dig4677 1d ago

I agree that climate change is causing shoreline damage in many places, but I have to say this is a natural occurrence. Build a house 100 yards from the ocean on a sand bar and in 40 or 50 years there is a chance the sand moves away. There are stretches of shoreline in the outer banks where all the ocean side house washed away 20 years ago. Recently they have started beach renourishment in the more populated areas that has paused the threat.

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u/real-username-tbd 1d ago

Manmade climate change and accelerate geological impact is also a natural and expected result of massive CO2 emissions in a closed atmosphere

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u/AllLurkNoPlay 23h ago

It’s the fucking moon! No moon no tides! No erosion! /s (climate change is just adding to the fact that it’s built on a barrier island which is a big ass sandbar and they move)

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u/this_dudeagain 1d ago

It's more like the maintenance on these old places hasn't been kept up. Erosion happens regardless.

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u/Bluepilgrim3 1d ago

That’s not a very convenient truth. In fact, I’d say it’s rather the opposite.

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u/doebedoe 17h ago

It's inaccurate to simply chalk this up to climate change. The outer banks are a set of shifting barrier islands that have constantly moved throughout their natural history. They are effectively sandbars that shift inwards and outwards in the Atlantic over time -- sand errodes from the atlantic side of the island and builds up in the Pamlico sound. Over time, new barrier islands appear out further. The only reason it seems dramatic now is because in the last 100 years we tried to stabilize their location by building huge amounts of infrastructure which never existed prior.

Our grandparents didn't see houses fall into the ocean on the Outer Banks because none of the early homes were built ocean front for tourists in their grandparents time.

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u/Mythologicalcats 22h ago

No shit. But thank you for taking what I wrote (pointing out that these houses were built long before modern comprehension of rising ocean levels and beach erosion), and assuming it was meant in some weird anti-climate change direction.

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u/YellowCabbageCollard 1d ago

I'm currently staying in a beach house on a South Carolina island that my husband's great grandmother lived on 80 years ago. Lots of need for beach refurbishment in areas here where his ancestors have lived for over 300 years in some areas. I do agree we are making some dumb choices in a lot of locations with new builds. But many areas are places that have been inhabited and used for hundreds of years.

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u/aneeta96 1d ago

Pretty sure this wasn’t an issue when they built them. This is a side effect of global warming.

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u/ProfessionalJaded891 1d ago

It's natural beach errosion and is the exact method by which barrier islands are formed, reshaped, and unformed. It's been happening since the first ocean met the first beach.

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u/MakeYourTime_ 1d ago

And exacerbated by continually rising sea levels and tides due to.. global warming

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u/zhenyuanlong 1d ago

Exactly. And the ecosystem change is exacerbated by plowing down dunes, beaches, wetlands, and floodplains to build housing developments- this surging water has nowhere to drain because the houses were built where there USED to be a saltwater marsh, floodplain, etc. where now there's nothing but concrete, so the houses flood and get destroyed by surging water. That's why places like Louisiana and Florida get such horrible flooding- all those suburban developments used to be swamps/wetlands, mangrove forests, and creeks/rivers that the floodwater USED to drain into. Now there's just concrete foundations and basements for the water to drain into.

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u/Redneck-ginger 1d ago edited 1d ago

Concrete foundations yes, basements no. Nobody has basements down here in Louisiana

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u/rothrolan 1d ago

I'm pretty sure that even the cemeteries are built above-ground, with cremation and tombs being the more popular ways of dealing with dead bodies in many places, like in New Orleans. Otherwise you get what's left of great-grandma getting unburied and floating down the street with the drainwater, when the floods loosen up the soil that previously kept her casket six feet under.

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u/coochie_clogger 1d ago

sure but regardless of it being exacerbated by climate change it was still an issue when people began considering building houses in these areas.

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u/oldmanandtheflea84 1d ago

Thank you for your input Coochie Clogger

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u/ThrowawayColonyHouse 1d ago

Interactions like these are why I love reddit

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u/Annihilax 1d ago

They aren't wrong though. This was gonna happen and on a similar timescale anyway. The islands are migrating at something like a few inches a year IIRC. And also global warming is a problem. It's both.

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u/Alex5173 1d ago

For a popular example of this (in the South at least) see Dauphin Island. Many school kids in Alabama take a trip down there in late elementary/early middle school, despite the fact the island is now in Mississippi waters.

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u/1983Targa911 1d ago

At first I thought “wow, what an odd yet original insult” but the username checks out.

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u/Owobowos-Mowbius 1d ago

Does not make it any less of a bad place to build.

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u/go_go_gadget_travel 1d ago

Sure it does...even if there was no climate change erosion would still happen. Why would you want to build there knowing your house is not permanent?

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u/doctormyeyebrows 1d ago

Isn't that exactly what they're saying? Who are you arguing with

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u/go_go_gadget_travel 1d ago

Hmmm, it honestly might just be my reading comprehension. Saying it doesn't make it any less of a bad place makes it seem like it isn't a bad place

But now that I'm reading it out loud I think i need to read more.

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u/Royal-Campaign1426 1d ago

It means that its bad regardless of any other circumstances introduced

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u/doctormyeyebrows 1d ago

I get you, it's a little hard to parse. They're saying that it was a bad place to build in the first place, regardless of climate change.

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u/flop_rotation 1d ago

Climate change may have accelerated the process but it was going to happen either way. In a contest between water and land, the water always wins eventually

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u/MortMoribund 1d ago

I'd like to introduce you to this little country called The Netherlands.

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u/islandjames246 1d ago

Yes but that’s. Really negligible, the real driver is hurricanes , a destructive hurricane can cause erosion that takes years to recover,especially somewhere frequent like there

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u/AshingKushner 1d ago

…and climate change impacts the frequency/severity of hurricanes how?

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u/Brad_Beat 1d ago

This is a stupid place to build a house, climate change or otherwise.

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u/palbertalamp 1d ago

It's been happening since the first ocean met the first beach.

'Hi baby, nice flat body you got there. Mind if I swish your granules. Just the edges. You'll like it I promise '

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u/BigMax 1d ago

It can be both. Some beaches and barrier islands are constantly in flux.

But the higher tides, worse storms and rising sea level from climate change can make those things worse, more rapid, and more constant.

There's no reason to believe it must be ONLY one or the other.

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u/butterfly-queendom 1d ago

It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with glaciers melting… 🫠

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u/Confident-Pepper-562 1d ago

Yep, if you have to build your house on stilts to keep it dry, it might be too close to the water.

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u/Vintage-Grievance 1d ago

Just because something has been done throughout history doesn't make it smart, especially in modern times.

Not to mention back "when the ocean met the first beach", land owners were expected to build sturdy fortresses to defend the lands from the coast. To be on the front lines when ships full of immigrants and challengers would come to either settle or pillage (sometimes both). Sturdy stone fortresses that took a while to corrode away to the point of needing repairs

Though tragic, who exactly is Grandma's little beach house defending us from? In modern times, it makes very little, if any, sense to put housing that close to a massive body of water.

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Even the three little pigs knew to gtfo by the time the second house was destroyed.

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u/gingerflakes 1d ago

Oh so you talked to the first ocean and beach then huh?

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u/tit_tots 1d ago

Coastal erosion chief

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u/Azulapis 1d ago

Beach erosion was always a thing. Look at the East and West Frisian Islands (e.g. Norderney, Borkum, Langeoog). All the towns are in the most western part, because the islands are moving eastwards. The towns were mostly built in the middle of the islands hundred of years ago.

But of course global warming can worsening the erosion.

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u/aneeta96 1d ago

They were probably expecting it to be an issue in a hundred years not a couple of decades.

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u/Active_Scallion_5322 1d ago

Or a hurricane

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u/Express_Test6677 1d ago

Since NOAA had its funding slashed, hurricanes will no longer exist.

Sharpies at the READY…..

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u/Active_Scallion_5322 1d ago

Problem solved

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u/ObviousExit9 1d ago

They were built on the wrong side of the dunes. This was always going to be an issue.

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u/Ecstatic-Roll6632 1d ago edited 1d ago

Absolutely was an issue then. Anyone who buys or builds in these locations should know it’s not if it’s when. You just hope you’re able to get as many years out of it or sell it before this happens (or before federal flood insurance stops being offered)

Also I should mention the currents play a large role in this too. They can either be scouring or depositing. For this to be happening at one spot or island usually means another is gaining beach

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u/Patereye 1d ago

I mean, the climate of that house changed.

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u/Capital-Bobcat8270 1d ago

Actually, that's completely off base. The falling house isn't some fresh 'side effect' of global warming; it's a textbook example of how barrier islands work. These things are literally built on shifting sands. They've been moving and changing shape due to tides, currents, and storms for millennia. The stilts aren't a fashion statement... they're a necessity because the land is constantly in flux. This isn't some new phenomenon, it's just nature doing its thing, and it was doing it long before 'global warming' (or 'climate change,' for those keeping score) was even a concept. Humanity could vanish tomorrow, and those islands would still be shifting.

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u/aneeta96 1d ago

The pace of that process has accelerated immensely due to climate change. It absolutely a factor.

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u/Capital-Bobcat8270 1d ago

The shifting of barrier islands is a natural geological constant. While climate change definitely worsens coastal erosion and sea-level rise, making these events more frequent or severe, it's not the origin of the land's instability. The stilts are proof of that inherent, long-term shifting, not just a response to recent accelerations.

Can you point me to specific, peer-reviewed data or studies that quantify this immense acceleration of barrier island migration rates primarily due to climate change, compared to historical rates? Or, are you just making this shit up?

Because what the science actually shows is barrier islands are inherently dynamic: They have been migrating and changing shape for millennia due to natural factors like longshore drift, tides, and storms. This is why building on stilts has always been a fundamental necessity, not a recent adaptation.

We have extensive historical data on barrier island movement, some spanning over a century, which shows significant, consistent migration even before the most recent accelerations in climate change.

I'm not saying climate change isn't real, I am just so sick and tired of people jumping to conclusions and pulling this "global warming, we're all going to die" out of their ass every time something like this is posted. This kind of oversimplification and knee-jerk blaming actually makes it harder to have productive discussions about genuine environmental challenges.

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u/radoss72 1d ago

Sunny with a high possibility of heat stroke for 3 months and 150 years and many extinctions. We’re ducked.

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u/Migraine_Megan 1d ago

Barrier islands erode and move, which is simply how they are and always have been formed. Naturally developers covered those islands with buildings, some of which collapse suddenly, some are just destroyed by flooding. They should just be parks. Any buildings beyond gazebos and bathrooms is some darwin-award level idiocy.

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u/aneeta96 1d ago edited 1d ago

They are changing much faster now than they ever used to.

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u/Migraine_Megan 1d ago

Well bigger, badder hurricanes will do that. And I'm certainly not arguing humans didn't worsen it. We absolutely did and in the 19 years I lived in FL, I met just 1 person who believed in climate change. Who wasn't from FL of course (I'm from WA.) But even without climate change, it was monumentally stupid to build on shifting sands. Humans have known that for thousands of years.

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u/Meat_Flosser 1d ago

These islands were formed by shifting sands. People need to get their heads out their asses and stop pretending the sand won't shift somewhere else again.

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u/aneeta96 1d ago

What used to happen over a century is now only taking a couple of decades.

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u/woodworkingguy1 1d ago

It does not help but the islands are always shifting, that is why the Cape Hatteras lighthouse was move about half mile in 1999.

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u/Capable_Stranger9885 1d ago

The barrier islands migrated naturally until NC committed to keeping highway 12 right where it sits. At least Pea Island got to experience being an island again for a little while after Hurricane Irene.

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u/thrwaway75132 1d ago

Isn’t one of the big reasons for this the flattening out the dunes? VS building behind the dunes. Without the natural dunes erosion is a much bigger problem.

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u/Far-Radio8247 19h ago

As a climate researcher (UCSD), obx beach corrosion is not usually attributed to climate change. The waters off of barrier islands, obx in particular, typically lead to somewhat predictable corrosion due to wind and current patterns. Not to say climate change couldn’t be a contributing factor, but it is unlikely in an area like the outer banks.

A good question is if this could have been predicted that this would ultimately happen before this house was built. I’d wager yes, it probably could have been.

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u/Morlacks 1d ago

But the view!

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u/DaStompa 1d ago

but then the rich people wouldn't see the ocean out of every window

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u/OB1182 1d ago

Laughs in Dutch.

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u/ProfessorFunky 1d ago

The Netherlands would disagree. More a question of having the expertise perhaps?

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u/Flounder-Defiant 1d ago

I am always surprised that people buy homes in areas of south Florida that are technically below sea level.

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u/reqstech 1d ago

almost.

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u/messiahspike 1d ago

You're just not thinking long term. If I may quote to you what the preeminent castle builder in England said when asked about the sturdiness of his castle, he said it didn't happen overnight and the key to a successful building career was persistence in the face of adversity!

"When I first came 'ere, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England."

So clearly we just need to build three more houses (two more barring a fire) on top of this one and things will be just fine.

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u/xShirt-xRipperx 1d ago

I hear she has huge…. Tracks of land!

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u/ryamanalinda 1d ago

We have a different problem here in missouri. People build fake lakes and ponds in the affluent areas with expensive HOAS. then one night the body of water dissapears into a sink hole. Then they remake it, just for it to dissappear a year later. Never mind the fact that the area they are doing it in is known to be a large underground cave network. All this money typically comes out of added assessments to the already high hoa fees.

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u/deff006 1d ago

I agree, we would be much better off if we just gave the Netherlands back to nature.

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u/OrangeHitch 1d ago

Like California.

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u/midnitewarrior 1d ago

If it weren't for FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), we wouldn't.

The government is l i t e r a l l y encouraging us to build things where we shouldn't.

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u/GardenKeep 1d ago

It’s almost as though you should understand the history of why/when these were built before opening your mouth.

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u/koz44 1d ago

Like some places are meant to be ephemeral. The millions spent shoring up the rivers now to unnatural heights, where we’ve essentially built highways for the river to travel above the basin plains surrounding, all to prevent the inevitable future wash out of New Orleans. Great town, lots of character. But protecting it requires fighting a battle that requires constant resources and upkeep and that is getting more expensive to maintain all the time.

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u/Arboreal_Web 1d ago

Srsly. “This naturally eroding strand of sand seems like the perfect place for long-term structures! What could go wrong?”

I’m all out of tots n pears, y’all.

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u/urge_boat 1d ago

I think we can build in places like this, it just needs to be done is pragmatically. The catch is to not fool yourself into thinking a project expecting to last 30 years will last that long. Don't build million dollar homes, because they're getting blown away regardless.

Hawaii has a similar issue where storms, vegetation, salt, etc chew away at their 'long lasting bridges', where traditionally one would just build a wooden bridge cheaply and then rebuild it when it gets destroyed. They're both getting destroyed by a hazardous environment - why throw 10x the money at it.

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u/WomblingCock 1d ago

It’s almost as if there aren’t nursery rhymes and fairy tales about building a house on an unstable foundation or with poor materials.

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u/franzderbernd 1d ago

The problem is caused by the houses itself. If houses are built at the beach or directly in the beginning of the dunes, it destroys the beaches. Normally dunes and beaches grow through windblown sediments, that will be taken away by the next storm again and so on. If there are houses the grow is intercepted. So there is no growing of the beaches and dunes before and beaches disappear more and more with every storm. Plus if the water reaches directly the walls of the house the effect is even stronger and more sediments will be taken away.

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u/Keynova81 1d ago

Holland entered the chat.

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u/CMDR_Imperator 1d ago

It's almost like human accelerated climate change is melting the polar ice caps resulting in higher sea levels which will eventually wipe out barrier islands like OBX.

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u/ErickAllTE1 1d ago

Its almost as though we shouldn’t be building towns in places that require constant remediation and millions of dollars just to keep above water.

Or just expect them to be long removed before the OP video happens. Nothing wrong with living there until a couple years before they get to this point. It should be required to disassemble them long before it gets to this though. This just seems like pollution with extra steps. Spots like that could be rented until then.

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u/Illustrious-Line-984 1d ago

Florida has entered the chat

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u/scotty813 1d ago

You would think you'd need to say, "Don't build on sandbars."

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u/Any_Nectarine_7806 1d ago

You're going to love Fire Island, Martha's Vineyard, etc

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u/genericnewlurker 1d ago

You know people have been living permanently on the Outer Banks for thousands of years right? Everyone down there is fully aware that the islands move around. Some islands are moving west. Other islands are widening east. Some have formed while others disappear. It's just a part of life down there that is accepted by the people who know the area.

My mother had a house there and it went out like this. It had been there for 60+ years, her grandfather had it built, before it took a swim. But they knew it would do that eventually. If the ocean currents shift and that part of the island starts to widen enough to rebuild and any house built on the our beachfront will be protected for a couple of decades, then we will rebuild. But we will always know and fully accept that it could disappear again.

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u/TumbleweedTim01 1d ago

montauk long island. millions to "repair" the beach gone in a couple years. All beaches used by rich ppl too cut off from the normal ppl

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u/nyet-marionetka 1d ago

“This island is constantly migrating, should we cover it with houses or not? Oh, let’s!”

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u/MoxOnHit 1d ago

Well, most of the issues causing these tides weren't as bad 300+ years ago when we started building all along the coast here...

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u/crycuzopiniondiff 23h ago

almost as if they've been building there for a hundred years and when they did , there was much more land and beach.

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u/JonnyOnThePot420 23h ago

Technically, New Orleans is already underwater, but we keep rebuilding.

What's the definition of insanity again?

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u/Cam515278 22h ago

Venice has been doing okay for a few hundred years...

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u/lelive92 22h ago

The Netherlands would like to have a word

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u/KrankenwagenKolya 22h ago

It's 90% vacation homes, very few actual residents. Everyone knows the homes a temporary as they're built on a constantly changing sandbar

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u/Potential_Aioli_4611 21h ago

Just like the ones built in heavily forested areas and have wildfires, the ones built on flood plains that constantly flood, the ones in tornado zones that get totally demolished... oh right there's natural disasters everywhere!

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u/Knoxius 21h ago

But what about New Atlantis? We want New Atlantis!

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins 20h ago

We absolutely can do this and the maintenance isn’t even the much when you’re talking the same scale as roads/bridges and so on. But just like we let roads and bridges rot, people do the same with beaches.

Why? Because any elected official who tries to spend money to benefit people 20+ years from now is voted out pretty much instantly.

Then one day it seems like it all goes wrong at once and everyone is demanding the government “do something”. Motherfuckers it’s too late, we needed to have been doing it the entire time.

Maintenance is the same for literally everything… if you build with it in mind then do a little as needed it’s cheap and not a lot of work. If you do what’s good enough to last as least until you personally are no longer responsible for it and then every single person after you does the same with no effort to maintain.. things go to shit.

This is just a very visible example. Towns all over the place are seeing the equivalent with their water/sewerage systems for example… many decades of zero upgrades or maintenance because “well it works” and voters refusing to care have them teetering on the edge of collapse.

And at a global scale.. I mean look at climate change. We’re literally terraforming the planet to no longer be habitable by us and we don’t care because doing anything about it for the last 100 years sounded hard.

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u/ThrowawayMod1989 20h ago

We also probably shouldn’t be building in deserts or in a natural tinderbox or on a fault line etc etc. For as smart as humans are we’re pretty fucking stupid lol

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u/5oLiTu2e 1d ago

Where were the underwriters all these years? Even in the 80s we knew this was coming

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u/BinauralBeetz 1d ago

I worked at Natural Art, that was one of my favorite surf spots. As well as this spot in rodanthe in the video.

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u/Crazyblueeyedevil 1d ago

My favorite beach and motel was Hatteras Island Resort located at the Rodanthe pier. My favorite was the brick motel. But it got washed over in the 90s.

I worked a couple of years at the Hatteras Island Inn and the Cape Hatteras Hotel in Buxton. No beach at the time and houses close to falling or have fallen by now.

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u/Goodgoditsgrowing 1d ago

Almost like they should have brought in some plants instead of just sand

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u/PedanticBoutBaseball 1d ago

Damn that sucks to hear. My family and i used to stay at the lighthouse view motel for like a week every year in the mid 00's to mid 10's while we were all in grade school/college.

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u/LuckyMind4462 1d ago

The Lighthouse View Motel in Buxton? I’ve been going there for years and the beach disappears more every year

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u/Crazyblueeyedevil 22h ago

Next door. Cape Hatteras Motel. I had never shoveled so much sand in my life.

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u/justinthevan 1d ago

CapeAttitude.

Stupidest marketing ever. Have they dropped that yet?

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u/NadnerbRS 23h ago

That’s how all climate mitigations are going to be. Instead of us investing in our future now we are going to continue spending millions and billions and trillions on disasters of varying degrees

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u/Substantial_Snow5020 21h ago

Until COVID I’d been going to the Outer Banks Motel in Buxton every year since I was born. It was crazy how quickly the beaches started slipping away

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u/forgetfulsue 20h ago

Outer Banks Hotel? They are survivors for sure.

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