Photos show how rising sea levels are washing away a small seaside town in North Carolina
James Pasley
- A town on North Carolina's Outer Banks made headlines last year when three homes collapsed into the sea.
- Rodanthe has become a symbol of the devastating impact of rising seas.
In North Carolina, a beach town is in crisis.
As the sea rises, owners of beachfront homes in Rodanthe, North Carolina, are watching as their neighbors are washed away — and they're waiting to see if it happens to them, too.
Some owners are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to move their homes back, while others have no choice except to wait for their homes to collapse. What's happening in Rodanthe could be a precursor to what happens to other coastal towns in the US.
Here's why Rodanthe has become a symbol of how rising seas can impact real people.
On May 10, 2022, an unoccupied beachfront house in Rodanthe, North Carolina, collapsed into the sea.
Sources: YaleEnvironment360, Smithsonian Magazine
It was the second house in Rodanthe to fall in a week and the third of the year.
Sources: YaleEnvironment360, Smithsonian Magazine
Rodanthe is located on Hatteras Island off the coast of North Carolina. It is one of many beach towns along a 200-mile stretch of islands called the Outer Banks.
Source: YaleEnvironment360
The Outer Banks is open to the elements, and towns like Rodanthe often get damaged by storms.
Here, a national park ranger surveys the damage Hurricane Irene caused on the highway at the edge of Rodanthe in 2011.
Sources: YaleEnvironment360, New York Times
Almost 40 years ago, Robert Dolan, a coastal geologist at the University of Virginia, pointed to the Outer Bank's unique position, leaving itself open to damaging, violent storms.
He wrote it had "one of the highest natural-hazard risk zones along the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States."
Source: YaleEnvironment360
Local photographer Michael Halminski told Yale Environment 360 an estimated 50 homes had collapsed into the sea since the 1970s.
Source: YaleEnvironment360
This is a home named "Wave Breaker" being pummeled by waves in 2014.
But things are getting worse. With rising sea levels and increasingly destructive storm surges, what was bad before has become more and more precarious.
Sources: YaleEnvironment360, New York Times
Rodanthe has become a symbol of the effects rising sea levels can have on people.
Sources: YaleEnvironment360, New York Times
The National Park Service estimates Rodanthe loses 13 feet of sand each year, and some parts of the town have lost 200 feet since the early 2000s.
Sources: YaleEnvironment360, WCNC Charlotte
The sea is now at their doorstep.
After three of Rodanthe's beachfront houses collapsed into the sea, Dare County stated last year another 11 houses faced the same danger. But the county can't do much about it.
It doesn't have the legal authority to condemn the houses or force the owners to act.
Sources: Smithsonian Magazine, YaleEnvironment360
A group of locals — including full-time residents, vacationers, and retirees — are doing what they can. They recently got county commissioners to abandon Seagull Road, which runs behind the houses.
Source: Washington Post
Now, a few of these owners are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to move their homes back from the sea, knowing that it's likely to be a short-term solution.
Source: Washington Post
Gus Gusler, who owns a vacation home on Seagull Street, told The Washington Post it was their last stand. "We'll move as far back as we can get this time, and we're done. There's nothing we can do about it after this," he said.
Source: Washington Post
Jeff Munson had been visiting Rodanthe for almost 20 years before he bought a vacation home. He told The Post there used to be "three football fields" worth of beach between his house and the sea, but it's nearly all gone.
Source: Washington Post
And some, like Ralph Patricelli, who purchased a property for $550,000 in 2021, or Hien Pham, who purchased another property in 2020 for $275,000, acted too late and already lost their homes to the sea.
Patricelli told The Washington Post he just ran out of time to move his house back.
After his house collapsed, the clean-up cost him $60,000, and he is still in discussions with authorities about how much more he owes.
Sources: Washington Post, New York Times
But a homeowner's insurance policy won't pay for them to proactively tear down their house. It'll only pay once the house collapses. This means owners are more likely to wait for the sea to do the work.
Source: New York Times
There's no group or organization that's singularly responsible. According to the Island Free Press, blame can be directed all over — a lack of government action, loopholes in real estate rules, insufficient land zoning regulations, and of course, climate change.
Source: Island Free Press
There are temporary measures that can be taken, like beach nourishment, which is basically pumping beaches with sand. But it's expensive — too expensive for Rodanthe's taxpayers — and it doesn't last forever.
A violent storm can wash away huge amounts of sand in a matter of hours.
Federal funds for beach nourishment are also reserved for public travel and safety and to protect infrastructure, so Rodanthe doesn't qualify.
Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, The Virginian-Pilot
Dare County Commissioner Danny Couch told The Washington Post it's now a balancing act between acknowledging people's connections to a place against the fact that buying beachfront property is no longer always tenable.
It's become a "roll of the dice," he said.
Source: Washington Post
"We cannot keep doing things the way that we've done this, with a structure there that's just waiting to be run over by the ocean," Couch said.
Source: Washington Post
What makes this situation more alarming is that developments keep happening. The Outer Banks is one of North Carolina's fastest-growing coastlines.
All of the properties in Dare County are valued at about $18 billion. In the summer, its population rose to 300,000.
Source: YaleEnvironment360
Coastal erosion across America already costs about $500 million each year in property loss alone. Yet people keep building and buying coastal properties.
Sources: Smithsonian Magazine, Washington Post
Over the next 30 years, with sea levels expected to rise by another foot, it's likely that other towns will experience what Rodanthe is experiencing.
Source: New York Times
It's not clear how it's going to work or who's going to pay. But it's almost guaranteed that Rodanthe won't be the only town where owners are faced with an impossible decision — either let their home collapse into the sea or move them back and wait and see what happens.
Sources: New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, Washington Post
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