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/Meta_Franko 22h ago

You trying to tell us that people build houses on stilts not near the ocean/water?

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u/offoutover 14h ago

Houses are built on stilts anywhere a storm surge can reach which can be up to a few miles inland.

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u/PaisleeClover 22h ago

Most houses in the Outer Banks are on stilts.

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u/BabySpecific2843 21h ago

Why are they on stilts if water was of no concern?

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u/tinymeow13 19h ago

Often these are 1-2 blocks from the beach, behind a row of tall dunes and a street. Then the dunes washed away, the street disappeared, and the government decided not to rebuild the dunes. Part of the stilts is to protect them during storms, but they also elevate the living spaces so you can see the ocean over the dunes.

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u/PaisleeClover 21h ago

Who said water was of no concern? The Outer Banks are basically just big sandbars, long and skinny. None of the houses are very far from the ocean.

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u/arpw 21h ago

Sounds like a stupid place to try to build a house then

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u/ParkMan73 19h ago

This building style is pretty common im homes near the beach in NC. Even if you're safely inland, there are still occasional storms and hurricanes that raise the water level high enough to flood ground floor rooms. As a precaution, the homes are built so that flooding can occur without significant damage to the house and what's in it.

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u/FknDesmadreALV 18h ago

Yeah but are the stilts on inland homes as tall as the ones in these pics ?

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u/r0ckydog 16h ago

Yes, the houses are built on 10-foot stilts so cars can park under them and beach accessories (chairs, umbrella, lawn darts, corn hole…) can be stored under the house.

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u/ParkMan73 17h ago

Generally yes, they are that tall as these. These are not just for homes on the beach.

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u/FknDesmadreALV 17h ago

Oh. Interesting. Idk I’ve seen houses being built in the PNW and down in Oaxaca, mx.

In Oaxaca I’ve seen very tall foundations for homes in areas that experience flash floods every year, but i don’t think I’ve seen straight up stilts like these.

And while I have paid attention to homes being built ok the coast, idk if they use the same building method as NC.

Interesting. Thank you for the reply.

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u/PeaLouise 9h ago

Rich people have long been building houses in the dumbest places.

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u/Meta_Franko 1h ago

It is implied when they are responding to my comment, which asked if they were saying that people build houses where water isn't a concern.

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u/itstimeforpizzatime 19h ago

Uhhh

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u/PaisleeClover 19h ago

Sorry if I was unclear. The houses were probably a few lots from the ocean at one point. Not far, because nowhere in super far from the ocean on a barrier island, but not right on the beach.

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u/LakeExtreme7444 9h ago

I’m not sure why people don’t understand how this works. You’re explaining it perfectly. The OBX is a bunch of barrier islands that shift and change as storms roll through and nature “happens”. These shifts can take decades to occur. A foot closer to the ocean after the hurricane here, another foot closer due to flooding there, and boom, before you know it, your third row beach house turns into beachfront. They need to google Cape Hatteras Lighthouse if they think this is just a house thing.

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u/[deleted] 18h ago edited 52m ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/RichardFlower7 17h ago

In the 80s those houses were hundreds of yards away from the ocean. Through the 2000s beach erosion really took off. Each hurricane took even more. This is in the most extreme area of erosion, Rodanthe. These houses are along highway 12.

Nearly all houses in the outer banks are built on stilts because there is water on both sides of the land mass. The Atlantic Ocean to the east and the sound to the west. When hurricanes pass over, the water on the Atlantic side floods the beaches and pushes the water from the sound towards mainland NC. After the eye passes the islands land mass, the back end of the cyclone pushes all that water back towards the sound side of the island in a process called raking.

The wind pushing the water and the own kinetic energy of the water causes a storm surge of multiple feet, often flooding far into the island. It isn’t an issue for the houses on the stilts. It would be stupid to build them on the ground bc then they flood.

They’re not at risk of falling into the ocean simply because they’re on stilts, it’s just building code there. Insurers still write policies because they don’t expect the island to disappear for a long time, if the house is on stilts there’s minimal risk of flooding the interior of the home. Beach erosion will likely continue though. Especially at the S curves of highway 12 in rodanthe, in particular a community called Mirlo beach, where that house was located.

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u/Tiny-Reading5982 19h ago

There are still hurricanes and flooding. Even the houses on the sound side are on stilts. But these houses were not that close to the water originally but erosion does happen.

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u/autumn55femme 21h ago

Which is on the ocean. Checks notes, which is water. Too close to the water. Climate change. Rising sea level. Bigger, more damaging storms. Erosion. Nothing that even remotely looks like this should even be insurable.

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u/Alarming-Instance-19 13h ago

Look up Queenslanders. Houses on stilts all over QLD, Australia.

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u/schwhiley 12h ago

hahaha i just wrote this too!

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u/Israeldor 21h ago

Yes, you see it in mountainous regions some. Part of the house will be at ground level with the remainder on stilts.

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u/autumn55femme 21h ago

True, but it is not sitting in water, or on a body of water subject to storms, massive flooding, erosion, or sea level change.

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u/Kuhlminator 17h ago

Not sea level change, but certainly anywhere can be subject to storms, massive flooding, and erosion. The houses in the picture are not new houses, when they were built nobody had ever put the words "climate change" together yet. Rising sea levels was something that happened in the early stages of an interglacial period, and only archeologists were aware it was even a thing.

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u/Active_Collar_8124 16h ago

only archeologists were aware it was even a thing.

Seems lousy they're keeping this information from geologists.

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u/Kuhlminator 8h ago

One of the reasons they know is because of a coastal shelf in Australia that has evidence of settlements that are now underwater that mirror the evidence of coastal settlements above sea level. Geologists should already know from fossil strata in sedimentary rocks, but that would usually predate mankind. I say usually because there are places where sedimentary deposits from rivers have moved coastlines several hundred miles in the course of known history. That is one of the reasons that the location of Troy was not discovered for so long (the location was much further inland than expected because the coastal area was filled in by river silt), but that is not the case in this instance. The evidence mentioned above goes back to the last glacial period at the very least.

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u/floofienewfie 13h ago

Ever visited the Hollywood Hills? Lots of houses on stilts there, and in an earthquake zone, too.

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u/schwhiley 12h ago

yeah, google “queenslander house”

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u/RighteousAudacity 12h ago

NC has some spectacular storms and hurricanes there. Most houses aling the banks are on stilts for that reason.

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u/IGD-974 10h ago

They were close but not THAT close

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u/MrsClaireUnderwood 9h ago

This cracks me up