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Tag: coastal erosion

  • Destruction continues as 11th Outer Banks home falls into ocean, NC park says

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    The nail-filled debris from collapsed homes is known to drift for miles and wash ashore at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the National Park Service says.

    The nail-filled debris from collapsed homes is known to drift for miles and wash ashore at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the National Park Service says.

    National Park Service photo

    Houses are continuing to fall at a record rate on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, with the 11th since mid-September collapsing overnight, Cape Hatteras National Seashore reports.

    It happened around 7:45 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, and the home was at 46006 Cottage Avenue in Buxton, the park reported. It was unoccupied at the time, officials said.

    Weather conditions at the time included a flood advisory, with predictions of large ocean swells and hours of overwash, the National Weather Service says.

    The cottage was built in 1956, valued at around $500,000, and the current homeowner purchased it in May, Zillow.com reports.

    It is the fourth to fall since Sept. 30 on Cottage Avenue, data shows. The other seven this year were on G.A. Kohler Court in Rodanthe and Tower Circle Road in Buxton, officials said.

    In all, 22 homes have collapsed in the area since 2020, the National Park Service says.

    Dozens more remain vulnerable in both towns, resulting in the National Park Service closing two sections of beach for safety reasons.

    Coastal erosion and sea level rise are driving the crisis, which involves “elevated beach-style homes situated on piling,” park officials say.

    “During severe weather events, which the Outer Banks of North Carolina experiences throughout the year, privately-owned oceanfront houses in vulnerable areas get battered by strong winds and large waves, leading to the collapse,” park officials says.

    It is common for the nail-filled debris to drift for miles and wash ashore on National Park Service beaches.

    Mark Price

    The Charlotte Observer

    Mark Price is a National Reporter for McClatchy News. He joined the network of newspapers in 1991 at The Charlotte Observer, covering beats including schools, crime, immigration, LGBTQ issues, homelessness and nonprofits. He graduated from the University of Memphis with majors in journalism and art history, and a minor in geology.

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    Mark Price

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  • Destruction continues as 11th Outer Banks home falls into ocean, NC park says

    [ad_1]

    The nail-filled debris from collapsed homes is known to drift for miles and wash ashore at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the National Park Service says.

    The nail-filled debris from collapsed homes is known to drift for miles and wash ashore at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the National Park Service says.

    National Park Service photo

    Houses are continuing to fall at a record rate on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, with the 11th since mid-September collapsing overnight, Cape Hatteras National Seashore reports.

    It happened around 7:45 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, and the home was at 46006 Cottage Avenue in Buxton, the park reported. It was unoccupied at the time, officials said.

    Weather conditions at the time included a flood advisory, with predictions of large ocean swells and hours of overwash, the National Weather Service says.

    The cottage was built in 1956, valued at around $500,000, and the current homeowner purchased it in May, Zillow.com reports.

    It is the fourth to fall since Sept. 30 on Cottage Avenue, data shows. The other seven this year were on G.A. Kohler Court in Rodanthe and Tower Circle Road in Buxton, officials said.

    In all, 22 homes have collapsed in the area since 2020, the National Park Service says.

    Dozens more remain vulnerable in both towns, resulting in the National Park Service closing two sections of beach for safety reasons.

    Coastal erosion and sea level rise are driving the crisis, which involves “elevated beach-style homes situated on piling,” park officials say.

    “During severe weather events, which the Outer Banks of North Carolina experiences throughout the year, privately-owned oceanfront houses in vulnerable areas get battered by strong winds and large waves, leading to the collapse,” park officials says.

    It is common for the nail-filled debris to drift for miles and wash ashore on National Park Service beaches.

    Mark Price

    The Charlotte Observer

    Mark Price is a National Reporter for McClatchy News. He joined the network of newspapers in 1991 at The Charlotte Observer, covering beats including schools, crime, immigration, LGBTQ issues, homelessness and nonprofits. He graduated from the University of Memphis with majors in journalism and art history, and a minor in geology.

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    Mark Price

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  • Rainstorms Hasten Soil Movement Beneath SoCal Houses

    Rainstorms Hasten Soil Movement Beneath SoCal Houses

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    Mansions perched on the edge of oceanfront cliffs in Dana Point. Homes red-tagged across shifting soil in Rancho Palos Verdes. Mudslides hurling debris into homes in Studio City.

    The river of storms sending buckets of rain across Southern California this month have caused slope collapses and shifting ground, placing homes into harm’s way, The Washington Post reported. 

    With the damage from floods, mudslides, sinkholes and coastal erosion has emerged striking images of three mansions atop the cliffs of Dana Point — stubbornly clinging to the precipice.

    Lewis Bruggeman, owner of the multimillion-dollar house nearest to the landslide, has told reporters that his house is stable despite its perilous appearance, while city officials insist the home is firmly anchored to bedrock.

    But an executive with an engineering firm that inspected the property after the slide said future rainstorms are “going to continue to eat away at the slopes.”

    “That’s going to need major, major work to stabilize that property,” Kyle Tourjé, executive vice president of Alpha Structural, a Los Angeles-based engineering firm that specializes in soil and structural work, told the Post.

    Tourjé said his firm has responded for emergency assessments and repairs for more than 60 landslides over the past week in Southern California.

    “We’re seeing more damage, and I think we will continue to see more significant damage,” he said. “Between back-to-back years of heavy saturation, these houses, these properties … they just can’t take this kind of beating.”

    The rains have only speeded up the slow-moving ground movement across hundreds of acres in Rancho Palos Verdes.

    The land has shifted and slumped, damaging homes and causing water and gas pipe leaks. Crews have worked to fill in fissures, while engineers have described the movement as unprecedented.

    “Areas that were only moving in inches are now moving in feet per year,” Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor John Cruikshank told the Post.

    The upscale city has confronted landslides for decades, but two rainy winters have accelerated the movement.

    In recent months, two homes have been red-tagged — deemed unsafe for occupancy — and the city closed eight miles of trails because of safety issues from open fissures, according to the mayor. Wayfarers Chapel, a famous ocean-view wedding spot known as the “glass church,” also closed earlier this month because of the shifting dirt. 

    “Clearly with that much glass above the temple area and being so precarious, you just can’t leave that open,” Cruikshank said. “That would be way, way too dangerous.”

    Cruikshank said the city will ask Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency for Rancho Palos Verdes.

    The latest storm slammed counties along the coast with more than 10 inches of rain over three days in some places, including hilly areas that have already been soaked by earlier downpours.

    Alpha Structural officials said they visited the Scenic Drive landslide site in Dana Point at Bruggeman’s request. The firm said it couldn’t provide a detailed report on its assessment or recommendations for the Orange County home.

    But the storms this month have left destruction far beyond Dana Point. Some 1.1 million homes across six counties have a moderate or greater risk of suffering damage from flash floods.

    Tourjé blames much of the problem to development decades ago under insufficient building and grading codes. 

    Residents also make problems worse, he said, by directing roof downspouts or pool runoff pipes onto vulnerable slopes. He and his colleagues have been racing to Malibu beachfront homes with the sand below them scoured away, train lines wiped out by landslides, homes knocked down, swimming pools filled with mud.

    “It seems to be getting progressively worse, year after year,” Tourjé told the newspaper.

    — Dana Bartholomew

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    TRD Staff

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  • Drone footage: Isla Vista bluff collapses in storm, damaging a student apartment balcony

    Drone footage: Isla Vista bluff collapses in storm, damaging a student apartment balcony

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    A bluff in Santa Barbara’s Isla Vista community where several people have fallen to their deaths over the years gave way during the recent storms, and students in an apartment building above the bluff were evacuated as inspectors checked a crumbling balcony.

    The terrace on the 6700 block of Del Playa Drive is cracked and hanging off the edge of the bluff, which has been eaten away by coastal erosion over the past few decades. The 45 UC Santa Barbara students who live in the building were evacuated Tuesday morning but allowed back in after an inspector examined the property. No one was injured.

    “The bluffs in Isla Vista have been a longtime problem,” said Laura Capps, a Santa Barbara County supervisor who visited the area Tuesday and spoke to students. “This morning it fell. Thankfully, no injuries. They were able to get all the kids out of the apartment.”

    The slide occurred around 9:50 a.m. due to “cliff / bluff erosion,” according to Santa Barbara County Fire spokesperson Scott Safechuck. It comes as the record-breaking storms that have buffeted California continue inundating many parts of Southern California with rain.

    Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant Garrett Te Slaa was first on scene Tuesday.

    He said the department was concerned about possible issues at the bluffs during the rain this week, and said coastal erosion is a constant issue in Isla Vista.

    “It’s obvious that the bluff is continuing to erode,” he said. “This is the perfect mix of a saturated bluff and over-capacity balconies.”

    Te Slaa said that crews were brought in Tuesday while students were evacuated to install a new fence along the balcony, closer to the property. He said that as coastal erosion continues, the balconies will become smaller.

    Capps took a photo from down the bluff that shows the red fence that encircles the balcony hanging over the beach, threatening to tumble into the sand.

    The bluffs have made headlines over the years as students and others have fallen to their deaths to the beach below.

    Since 1994, 13 people have died in cliff accidents, according to the Santa Barbara Independent.

    Most recently, a student, Benjamin Schurmer, died after falling about 40 feet from the bluffs.

    Capps proposed an eight-step plan to combat the deaths, including increasing the height of fencing surrounding the 60 or so properties on the bluffs.



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    Noah Goldberg

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