RODANTHE, North Carolina — At Mirlo Beach in Rodanthe, tourists walked the beach and took in the summer sun Thursday afternoon. But a week ago, the ocean swept away another house, the seventh since 2020.
“It really does hurt. It’s people you know, just lost their house and causes a lot of mess here," said Kara Ammons, who has lived in Rodanthe since 2016.
Watch: Cleanup underway for Rodanthe house swept up in waves
News 3 obtained a letter dated August 15th, the day before the collapse, from the owners of the E. Corbina Drive home. It was addressed to Dare County elected leaders with a plea for help about the imminent collapse of their property.
“The house has been in peril for some time, for months, and our staff had been in contact with the owners of that house, as well as the Park Service staff, so there was ongoing conversations, ongoing planning, ongoing thinking about what we all knew was an imminent problem that was coming," said Bobby Outten, Dare County manager.
But before they figured out a way to move forward, mother nature stepped in.
Watch: Another house collapses in Rodanthe; Hurricane Ernesto hampers cleanup efforts
Figuring out ways to address this are nothing new for the area. We spoke with homeowners just off the beach who preferred to stay off camera.
One said it's impacting their rentals for next year, one is thinking of selling his house, one doesn’t keep it in on his mind, but most agree something needs to be done.
Outten said there are three potential solutions, but all require some kind of funding. Those include: beach nourishment, the homeowner paying to have their house moved or the home being purchased by the state or federal government. Outten shared insight on all three below.
Beach Nourishment
"If you build the beach and you dissipate the energy and you prevent the shoreline from eroding, then the houses won't fall. You understand all the data with that, we've talked about that before. That's been published before, and basically that's a money issue, because it's really, really expensive to do that project."
Homeowner pays to have their house moved
"If it's economically feasible, then the owners can move houses and owners have moved houses. So, that again becomes an economics decision by the owner. Can they afford it? If they can't afford it, what's their return? Do they have somewhere to move it?"
Watch: Rodanthe house collapses into ocean
State or Federal Government buys the property
"Is it a buyout and bailing out a property owner for a poor investment decision? Or is it a good investment? Because it keeps our beaches clean, our tourism economy going, and so on. So there's a balance in there where there can be investment from the beneficiaries of a tourism economy, which would be the state, the local and the feds, and if there's funds coming from those, then it makes some sense to invest some of those funds."
Dare County only has the ability to deem a property uninhabitable, the county has no control over telling a homeowner what to do with their property in these situations. Outten offered a final thought when it comes to insurance. The homeowner has two options when it comes to insurance: registering with the FEMA National Flood Insurance Program, with a max payout of $250,000 or going with whatever they can afford through a private insurance company.
“If they're insured, then the question becomes, is it a gradual erosion, a flood event that allows the policy to pay? And there's some question about that. If you have a named storm where the ocean rises and the ocean takes the house out, then that's been deemed a flood event, and it pays. If you have gradual erosion in a sunny day collapse, then the question becomes, have you had a flood event that caused that? And I don't know the answer to that."
Watch: Outer Banks house collapses into ocean
"It plays into the economics from the owner's side of moving the house. If I'm not going to get my insurance and I've got to pay the cost of cleanup, is it cheaper to clean it up before it falls or after it falls? Whereas, if they're getting an insurance payment, then the question is, if I can clean it up for less than my insurance payment, then I come out ahead by letting it fall, because I don't get my insurance unless it falls."
"And so some of the debate in that working group is, in a house that's imminently threatened. do we go ahead and pay it out to allow the owner to remove the house before it damages the beaches and creates all the debris problems that we have? And that's a policy debate that has to happen in Congress."
Outten says there isn’t a ready-made solution but there are working groups with state, federal and local stakeholders trying to address the best way to fund this issue moving forward. News 3 will continue to keep our viewers updated as this issue progresses.
