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

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

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

66.1k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

8.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

97

u/Meta_Franko Jun 06 '25

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

25

u/PaisleeClover Jun 06 '25

Most houses in the Outer Banks are on stilts.

17

u/BabySpecific2843 Jun 06 '25

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

35

u/tinymeow13 Jun 07 '25

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.

14

u/PaisleeClover Jun 06 '25

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.

23

u/arpw Jun 07 '25

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

19

u/ParkMan73 Jun 07 '25

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.

2

u/FknDesmadreALV Jun 07 '25

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

13

u/r0ckydog Jun 07 '25

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.

5

u/ParkMan73 Jun 07 '25

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

3

u/FknDesmadreALV Jun 07 '25

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.

2

u/ktrosemc Jun 12 '25

LOL...we don't use the stilts in the PNW because of earthquakes!

→ More replies (0)

4

u/PeaLouise Jun 07 '25

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

1

u/Meta_Franko Jun 07 '25

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.

1

u/itstimeforpizzatime Jun 07 '25

Uhhh

https://preview.redd.it/dae7wxdq1f5f1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4b607159141596c5bf12b64d750ee9daf72113d0

3

u/PaisleeClover Jun 07 '25

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.

2

u/LakeExtreme7444 Jun 07 '25

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.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 07 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/RichardFlower7 Jun 07 '25

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.

2

u/Tiny-Reading5982 Jun 07 '25

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.

2

u/autumn55femme Jun 07 '25

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.

25

u/offoutover Jun 07 '25

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

1

u/yehudi71 Jun 12 '25

Yup. My parents house is built on stilts (much better than the ones in this example) and they live about 2 miles inland. Still very much a flood zone.

5

u/Alarming-Instance-19 Jun 07 '25

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

1

u/schwhiley Jun 07 '25

hahaha i just wrote this too!

1

u/NekoOhno Jun 11 '25

they were originally built on stilts due to flooding (also to assist cooling)

6

u/Israeldor Jun 06 '25

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

1

u/autumn55femme Jun 07 '25

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

2

u/Kuhlminator Jun 07 '25

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.

1

u/Active_Collar_8124 Jun 07 '25

only archeologists were aware it was even a thing.

Seems lousy they're keeping this information from geologists.

1

u/Kuhlminator Jun 07 '25

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.

1

u/floofienewfie Jun 07 '25

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

1

u/schwhiley Jun 07 '25

yeah, google “queenslander house”

1

u/RighteousAudacity Jun 07 '25

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

1

u/IGD-974 Jun 07 '25

They were close but not THAT close

1

u/MrsClaireUnderwood Jun 07 '25

This cracks me up