RODANTHE, NC. — Just days ago the home at 23001 GA Kohler Court stood tall.
Not anymore.
The house collapsed overnight in Rodanthe and became the latest victim of the ocean.
“The biggest concern is just cleaning everything up. We get a lot of slack. All these homeowners do, that they don't care, and these are money machines and that's not the case. You know, we lose sleep over littering the beach," said Paul Troy, the owner of the house, who drove three hours down to Rodanthe this morning after being informed of the collapse.
Watch: Another Rodanthe oceanfront house collapses in the Outer Banks
Paul Troy and his family have owned the home since 2008 and were hoping to potentially move it before it collapsed.
“We lost 13 vertical feet, we lost the staircase, and we lost part of the septic system. We chose not to rent it out the rest of the summer, because we were going to wait, see what the beach did, see if it came back.”
The issue of what to do with the structures is complex. For homeowners, it isn’t always financially feasible to move or destroy it and they are also expected to foot the bill for clean-up if it collapses. For the county they can only deem the property uninhabitable, they have no control over telling the homeowner what to do. Lastly, insurance claims are what one expert called a vicious cycle. The public insurance payout will most likely be much lower than the actual value of the house and the private insurance options in Dare County are slim.
Watch: Rodanthe home that used to be hundred yards from the water now sits in the ocean
But Troy feels homeowners are getting the short end of the stick, even when they are doing their best to not let this continue to happen.
“Our biggest concern was stopping what's happening right now from stopping, and we get nothing but hurdles thrown at us. I don't blame just Dare County, I blame the insurance companies too. ...I hope for these other houses that it doesn't continue and I can't blame Dare County for that. You can't fight Mother Nature. I don't know if beach nourishment is the answer. I don't know what the answer is and I don't think they do, but when you have a situation where somebody's willing to do something, you have to be able to work with them so we can mitigate all this problem.”
Watch: Rodanthe oceanfront homes being monitored during presence of high winds and surf
At this point it’s not clear what the solution is and that’s from all parties involved: homeowners, government and insurance companies. Local, federal and state stakeholders have released a report of some short and long term solutions to the present issue, which includes offering more help to people to tear down the homes before they fall in the ocean.
But with even more threatened structures in this same area, Mother Nature might be the one to decide what happens next. The expectation from contracting crews is that it will take a week to clean-up, that's similar to how long the last one took. One of the challenges is that the area where it happened is a much smaller spot to navigate.
