Not good. Photo: National Park Service
Another beachfront home has collapsed on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. The structure was a two-story, wood-shingled stilt home located on the north end of Hatteras Island. On Tuesday afternoon, the unoccupied building collapsed, littering debris across the sand.
“Seashore staff are out today, cleaning up the beach to the south of the collapse site,” Mike Barber, a spokesman for the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, said in an email to ABC News. He added that the homeowner has hired a contractor to “work primarily near the house collapse site to remove the bulk of the remaining house structure and nearby debris associated with the collapse.”
This marks the 12th collapsed house on the Outer Banks in the past five years. However, this recent case is an outlier in that the majority of the previous collapses occurred in Rodanthe, North Carolina.
“The effects of erosion in these villages have resulted in structures being present on the open beachfront or in the intertidal area,” explained the National Park Service in a statement after two houses collapsed in the same day last year, “which may result in reduced beach access and safety for visitors, a loss of habitat for shorebirds and sea turtles, and, sometimes, structure collapses on Seashore beaches, resulting in many miles of beach debris.”
