Several more beach homes have crashed into the ocean along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, littering the shoreline with hazardous debris while raising the total number of felled homes along the barrier island to 31 since 2020.
Video posted on social media shows entire homes buckling and bobbing away in the powerful surf along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in the wake of a historic winter storm that brought high wind gusts and several inches of snow to the Carolinas.
As of Sunday, four homes in Buxton have fallen into the Atlantic. This brings the total number of homes lost to the surrounding ocean to 20 since September, and 31 since May of 2020, the National Park Service said.
All four of the privately owned homes were unoccupied at the time of their destruction, officials said.
Dozens of oceanfront structures near or along the beaches in Buxton and Rodanthe, approximately 25 miles north, remain under threat of collapse due to worsening coastal erosion and rising sea levels. This has led to a closure of the beach in front of Buxton since last year, a park official told HuffPost in an email Thursday.
“When a house collapses onto the beach and into the ocean, the houses break up into many different parts and pieces which get carried along with the currents. In some cases, debris from house collapses have been observed on the beach more than a dozen miles from the collapse sites,” said Robin Snyder, deputy superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
Officials are trying to work with the property owners to develop a cleanup strategy, which has not been easy, said David Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which is managed by the National Park Service.
“At least a couple of the homeowners have been working with us to inquire about permits for cleanup. Two of them have contacted us,” he told Island Free Press. “The debris is still washing up, so we’re just trying to understand how far it goes — letting the dust settle.”
Most of the Outer Banks homes that have collapsed were constructed along the barrier island in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, when the properties were much farther from the surf, according to local government officials.
“Due to the high costs associated with relocating a home to another property or having it professionally demolished before it eventually collapses on its own, many homeowners are unable to afford either of these options and instead must wait for their damaged or threatened home to succumb to the sea so they can file a claim and collect insurance,” authorities said in an online explainer.
Homeowners who file an insurance claim can receive up to $250,000 for the structure and up to $100,000 for its contents, according to officials in Dare County, where the properties are located.
In 2023, the National Park Trust announced a partnership with the National Park Service to purchase and safely remove two at-risk homes in Rodanthe, approximately 25 miles north of Buxton. The purchase was made using resources from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses earnings from offshore oil and gas leases to protect land, water and historic sites.