r/interestingasfuck • u/Endolithic • Jun 06 '25

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

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921

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

Mostly Rodanthe and Buxton. No beach left.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/cadmious Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

"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/mostlybiguy69 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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] Jun 06 '25

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u/mostlybiguy69 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 07 '25

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 Jun 07 '25

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/Goodgoditsgrowing Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 07 '25

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/CommonBubba Jun 07 '25

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/leconfiseur Jun 07 '25

Behind the dunes is more water

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u/robitussinlatte666 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 07 '25

That’s how it is in the Outer Banks too

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u/robitussinlatte666 Jun 07 '25

Ol Dirty Myrtle, good times lol

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 07 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/robitussinlatte666 Jun 07 '25

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

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u/Jikode Jun 07 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/ItIsHappy Jun 06 '25

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

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u/Merkinfuqer Jun 06 '25

The Carolinas too.

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u/robitussinlatte666 Jun 07 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/Maaaaaandyyyyy Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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/forgetfulsue Jun 07 '25

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 Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 07 '25

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 Jun 07 '25

Oh heck yeah my science brotha!

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u/DifficultBoss Jun 07 '25

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

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u/trunolimit Jun 07 '25

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/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/coolborder Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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/DionBlaster123 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

It's called barrier island migration.

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u/thewheelforeverturns Jun 07 '25

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

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u/onepostandbye Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

MANGROVES AND SEAGRASS FOR PRESIDENT

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u/Curry_courier Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 07 '25

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/Mattna-da Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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/joebluebob Jun 06 '25

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/Far_Winner5508 Jun 06 '25

Mangroves and sea grass.

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u/Maleficent_Bowl_2072 Jun 06 '25

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/Mythologicalcats Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/Impossible-Dig4677 Jun 06 '25

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/AllLurkNoPlay Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/Bluepilgrim3 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/doebedoe Jun 07 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

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_ Jun 06 '25

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

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u/zhenyuanlong Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25

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

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u/rothrolan Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

Thank you for your input Coochie Clogger

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u/ThrowawayColonyHouse Jun 06 '25

Interactions like these are why I love reddit

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u/Annihilax Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/Owobowos-Mowbius Jun 06 '25

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

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u/go_go_gadget_travel Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/go_go_gadget_travel Jun 06 '25

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/flop_rotation Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/islandjames246 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/palbertalamp Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/tit_tots Jun 06 '25

Coastal erosion chief

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u/Azulapis Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

Or a hurricane

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u/Express_Test6677 Jun 06 '25

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

Sharpies at the READY…..

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u/ObviousExit9 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

I mean, the climate of that house changed.

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u/Capital-Bobcat8270 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/Capital-Bobcat8270 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25

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

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u/Meat_Flosser Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/woodworkingguy1 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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/Morlacks Jun 06 '25

But the view!

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u/DaStompa Jun 06 '25

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

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u/OB1182 Jun 06 '25

Laughs in Dutch.

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u/ProfessorFunky Jun 06 '25

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

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u/Flounder-Defiant Jun 06 '25

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

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u/messiahspike Jun 06 '25

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/ryamanalinda Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/OrangeHitch Jun 06 '25

Like California.

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u/midnitewarrior Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

Holland entered the chat.

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u/CMDR_Imperator Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

Florida has entered the chat

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u/scotty813 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/Any_Nectarine_7806 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/genericnewlurker Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/MoxOnHit Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

What's the definition of insanity again?

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u/Cam515278 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/lelive92 Jun 06 '25

The Netherlands would like to have a word

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u/KrankenwagenKolya Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

But what about New Atlantis? We want New Atlantis!

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins Jun 07 '25

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 Jun 07 '25

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/BinauralBeetz Jun 06 '25

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/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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

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u/PedanticBoutBaseball Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

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

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u/justinthevan Jun 06 '25

CapeAttitude.

Stupidest marketing ever. Have they dropped that yet?

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u/NadnerbRS Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 06 '25

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 Jun 07 '25

Outer Banks Hotel? They are survivors for sure.

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u/johnnyhala Jun 06 '25

Since you seem to know the area, are you supposed to pronounce the 'E' at the end of Rodanthe? Or is pronounced "Row Danth"?

This is quite a matter of debate at my office in Charlotte.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

I'm originally from the backwoods 100 miles inland from there. I've always heard the e pronounced there. Or they call it the tri villages.

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u/toilet_roll_rebel Jun 06 '25

The "E" is definitely pronounced.

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u/midnitewarrior Jun 06 '25

I just looked at a map for this.

Who thought it was a good idea to build things here???

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was relocated because it was going in the ocean.

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u/midnitewarrior Jun 06 '25

Lighthouses are the one thing that actually should be built there. Not sure if they are needed in the modern day, but for the last 300 years, yeah, that would have been a good thing.

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u/inthecuckoosnest Jun 06 '25

Haven't been down there since pre-COVID. Do you mean the beach has eroded away entirely or is it just covered because of unusually high tides?

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

Eroded away. I saw them pumping sand during one trip and the next year it was eroded away. They don't call it the graveyard of the Atlantic for nothing.

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u/MileHigh_FlyGuy Jun 06 '25

It's almost like barrier islands are always in flux and they shouldn't build homes on a barrier island beach. Well... if they want the home to last long.

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u/Hendry1859 Jun 06 '25

Yeah I’ve driven through there. It’s crazy. And people keep wanting the state to continue pouring good money after bad to “save” their homes.

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u/queso_dog Jun 06 '25

Rodanthe is my fave vacation spot in the world, I believe I’ve actually stayed right behind these houses before if I remember correctly :(

They had to build a whole new bridge to bypass a chunk of Rt 12 because there’s simply too much erosion for road anymore. I went the last summer that part of 12 was open and large parts of it were sand covered or flooded. It’s such a special place but it’ll be gone to time by the end of my life.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

The original bridge opened in 1960 I think

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u/FrankSinatraYodeling Jun 06 '25

Ever since they put in that bridge, it's been rapidly getting worse.

Maybe they should stop building there.

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u/emilyyyxyz Jun 06 '25

I thought the bridge was a symptom, not the cause? Definitely possible that its construction made erosion worse in the short/medium term, but I've been told by locals that the road in northern Rodanthe, at the time the only way on/off the island from the north, would get totally washed over during storms and people would end up trapped during hurricane season.

Haven't noticed any additional construction on the island since the bridge was added, other than the odd vacation house in established neighborhoods. Rodanthe is the only place you see houses literally built into the sand, and that's not done anymore.

Plenty of construction down in Avon, though, so yeah, I dunno.

Source: I go there a few times a year

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u/FrankSinatraYodeling Jun 06 '25

I've heard it's because they stopped having to fix the highway every year. We're just seeing nature take the area back over.

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u/ChicagoDash Jun 06 '25

There’s a lotta hay fields in Buxton.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

Buxton, North Carolina.

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u/Brilliant-Pomelo-982 Jun 06 '25

I thought that looked like Rodanthe

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u/IamScottGable Jun 06 '25

So were the posts under the house buried in sand before?

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

Built on them

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u/GenericAccount13579 Jun 06 '25

Shit, used to vacation in Avon or Buxton every summer. I mean, not surprised by this (the beach was disappearing and any storm would raise the tide significantly already) but still sad to see.

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u/BlackSchuck Jun 06 '25

When we were dating, my wife and I spent 5 hellishly hot days in a tent on some small grounds in Rodanthe.

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u/secrets_and_lies80 Jun 06 '25

That’s so sad. My family used to vacation down in Buxton every year once everyone got tired of camping at the nat’l seashore. I got married in a rental house on the sound side in Buxton.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

I vacationed for years there. Tried living there 2 years. Not the same. Only beach left worth walking was at the old Frisco pier. Haulover on the sound side was ok if you could find parking.

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u/justinthevan Jun 06 '25

Buxton beach is fine. It's just filled with 1940s fuel oil.

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u/Pollymath Jun 06 '25

I'm pretty sure these two houses are in some of the Google Images first results.

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u/H0SS_AGAINST Jun 06 '25

It's almost like coast lines are always changing and fighting it is a losing battle.

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u/Dingus_Khaaan Jun 07 '25

I drove through there a few years back during a crazy (non tropical) storm and the flooding was so bad my Honda civic I had at the time almost didn’t make it lol

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u/winniecooper73 Jun 07 '25

This comment makes me sad. We went to Buxton every summer in the 90s and had a blast on those beaches. What happened to them? All under water now?

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u/Glass-Discipline1180 Jun 07 '25

No it's Turdanne and Asston