NC - Two houses that risk being washed into the sea along the Outer Banks of North Carolina are snapped up by National Parks Service for $700,000 - and both will be torn down
The National Park Service recently bought two neighboring houses in Rodanthe, North Carolina. The houses were both at risk of collapsing on the shore due to beach erosion. In February of 2022 another Rodanthe beach house was washed into the sea
Two oceanfront houses at risk of being washed away in the ocean from the North Carolina coast were purchased by the National Parks Service.
The East Beacon Road homes in Rodanthe, North Carolina, along the Outer Banks were in danger of collapsing due to beach erosion.
For $700,000, the feds bought the homes with immediate intentions of tearing them down and turning the land into public beach access.
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Read also
Why Outer Banks houses at risk of collapse bought by government, The Washington Post / October 16, 2023 (Paywalls applies)
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'What's driving the boat on this is public safety. All three of the entities here local, state, and federal, we're concerned about making sure that people who are enjoying…the best beaches in the United States…it's about keeping the public safe,' Dare County Commissioner Danny Couch said.
The four-bedroom and six-bedroom homes have stood on wooden stilts since the 1980s but plans to demolish them come after five privately owned beach houses collapsed in Rodanthe since 2020.
David Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore told The Washington Post that funding for this large purchase came from the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
'Up until we did this, there didn't appear to be any tools in the toolbox for us to help mitigate the problems associated with these threatened oceanfront structures,' Hallac said.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund was founded by Congress in 1964 and is funded by offshore oil and gas leasing. It was made to protect important cultural and natural areas, and to expand recreational opportunities for Americans.
The houses, which were practically unlivable, had many major issues that affected those inside and the people around them.
Like many shore houses, they were made of wood, which soon chipped off as debris caused by high winds, hurricanes and wave impact that managed to float away into the Atlantic and fly away around the properties.
The deteriorating structures were not only unsafe to humans but also to wildlife in the area.
The Outer Banks has a huge population of turtles and seabirds, but with unstable homes so close to the shore, they have lost their habitats.
The houses septic systems also weren't running properly and causing flooding issues.
Despite the setbacks, some homeowners have opted to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their homes shifted back away from the shoreline, but erosion in Rodanthe has moved too fast.
A National Parks official told DailyMail.com that the shoreline near the collapsed house in Rodanthe eroded at a rate of 4.1 meters/year between 1998 and 2019.
An engineering assessment done this year by Dare County, where Rodanthe is located, found that the cost of overhauling the entire beach to make it safe would cost as much as $40million.
Over 30 years, maintaining that beach would cost more than $175 million, the report found.
In March, a house collapsed on East Point Drive in Rodanthe. According to the Cape Hatteras National Park website, the house was unoccupied and demolished during inclement weather.
On February 9, 2022, another Rodanthe house fell to its doom because of beach erosion.
The 1,960-square-foot structure was built in 1980 near the Rodanthe Pier on what has become an erosion-prone stretch of beach.
Photos show the beige house sunken into the sand of the shoreline with its top floor crushing the bottom.
