Video: Nightmarish clip of a house being washed to sea in North Carolina

Originally published at: Video: Nightmarish clip of a house being washed to sea in North Carolina | Boing Boing

5 Likes

Do I even have to ask where Cawthorn or his enemies in the NC GOP all stand on taking substantive action to address the climate emergency?

15 Likes
21 Likes

Still, I wouldn’t put it past many beachside homeowners to try and sell to somebody unsuspecting, because that’s the American Way.

14 Likes

for sale: one houseboat.

16 Likes

Comes with the territory on the Outer Banks. Those islands have always been temporary. They are all sand and shift over time with tide and wind.

19 Likes

Reminder: in 2012 the NC legislature passed a law that limited how much official projections of ocean rise could report. Instead of the exponential increases predicted by climate science, the rise that could be reported was limited to linear projections.

17 Likes

It is a housemarine!

5 Likes

Was this one even because of sea level rises or just where they built it?

Along the outer banks, you see houses built in 3 different locations relative to the ocean.

  • Behind the sand dune, with the dune built up and protected to provide some space between ocean and house.
  • Where the dune used to be, before they cleared it to build the house. These houses don’t need sea level rise, regular beach erosion is enough. Even a big storm is plenty.
  • Between the dune and the ocean. These houses will all be washed away. Most of them are probably gone already. I used to see them wash away 40 years ago. They mostly stopped allowing these to be built.

The satellite photo looks like this is an example of the second one. None of the houses on the East side of that road or the road should have been built.

Sea level rise will eventually get the Outer Banks as the ocean and the sound join, turning it into a series of islands. But, I think this one was just someone building in the surf to begin with.

16 Likes

The tide comes in, and it goes back out.

6 Likes

These aren’t really mutually exclusive answers, since warming is affecting storm frequency, intensity, beach erosion, etc. It is all the things.

10 Likes

With every seasonal wind shift there are different ship wrecks on the shore that appear until a storm covers them up again.

This too will happen with homes. Sooner than later it seems.

5 Likes

I probably saw that house last October; friends drove us down the Outer Banks in a rainstorm from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras to see the Graveyard of the Atlantic museum. A big chunk of the road is being relocated to the leeward side of the islands because of potential erosion.

9 Likes

There are just some places where you shouldn’t build a house.

7 Likes

While that’s true, that they’re all related. There’s a huge number of Outer Banks houses that look like they were built right next to the high tide mark, or between the low and high tide marks. That they wash away isn’t a surprise and has been happing for 40+ years.

2 Likes

Meanwhile, Carolina tribal elders just shake their heads. “There’s a reason we didn’t settle there, and we only had to be told once.”

11 Likes

They’re going to have to change the name to Inner Banks soon, methinks.

6 Likes

Then the Inner Ban… Inner Ba… Inner B… Inner… Inne… Inn… In… I… … … .

6 Likes

Is this the same North Carolina where the GOP tried to make it illegal for government agencies to talk about rising sea levels?

12 Likes

The Cape Hatteras National Seashore said an unoccupied house collapsed at 24235 Ocean Drive

Ocean Drive. These days, that’s a hint as to where future homeowners should be setting up house.

6 Likes