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Ralph Patricelli had big plans for a vacation home on 24235 Ocean Drive in Rodant, a hair’s breadth in the middle of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
He and his sister bought a four-bedroom beachfront house in August for $ 550,000. With its spacious rooms, two deck levels and stunning views of the Atlantic Ocean, Patricelli presented it as the perfect place to meet friends and family after two years of an isolating pandemic. After the last tenants of the season left, he and his relatives had planned to hold a Thanksgiving gathering at the home.
Instead, Patricelli never spends the night there.
A November storm affected the septic system, he said, and county officials soon felt the house was uninhabitable. On Tuesday, less than 300 days after buying it, the house became one of two along Ocean Drive that collapsed into the sea after days of being hit by an unnamed coastal storm.
“I was so looking forward to having a place where I could have fun and get back to normal,” Patricelli, a 57-year-old East Coast real estate agent who grew up on the East Coast, said in an interview.
“I didn’t realize how vulnerable it was,” he added.
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Patricelli’s home was swept away overnight, but a video of his neighbor’s house sunk in the ocean went viral this week. This neighbor, who lives in Tennessee, declined to comment when asked on the phone. A third house nearby met the same fate in February.
“It was a shock,” Patricelli said of the call he received that his house had disappeared. He later sent photos from before and after the crash, writing: “Now there is absolutely nothing there – everything is taken from the sea – in fact we have an empty plot.”
The precarious nature of housing on the Foreign Banks and other barrier islands is nothing new. Nor is the desire of some Americans to accept the risks posed by hurricanes and other natural disasters in exchange for homes and investments in desirable locations.
But this week’s Outer Banks episode highlights a problem that is likely to worsen as climate change worsens.
For various reasons, Americans continue to flock to disaster-prone areas of the country, despite growing risks of floods, fires and other catastrophes. And as sea levels rise, storms intensify and heat waves become hotter, even places that once seemed relatively risk-free could face more serious threats to health and homes.
Few people were less surprised by the recent collapse of houses in Rodant than David Halak, governor of the national coast of Cape Hatteras.
“What was surprising to me was that they lasted as long as they were,” he said in an interview Thursday. “This is a rapidly eroding zone.” [and] I have no reason to believe that erosion will stop. If nothing else, the scientists I’ve talked to and the publications I’ve read suggest that erosion will be exacerbated by rising sea levels.
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Findings released this year by scientists from a number of federal agencies predict that sea levels will rise along the U.S. coast by an average of one foot over the next 30 years – “as much as the rise measured in the last 100 years.”
In addition, researchers estimate that rising sea levels will create a “profound change in coastal floods” in the coming decades, allowing stormy waves and tides to reach inland. By 2050, they write, “moderate” floods are expected to occur on average 10 times more often than today.
Halak said it is important to understand that barrier islands are moving and changing, and the sands of the Outer Shores have always shifted. Not all houses there face such risks and not all risks are due to climate change. “[But] “Climate change is likely to exacerbate these problems and will continue to exacerbate them,” he said.
What is striking, Halak said, is that people continue to buy housing on the Foreign Banks, which are dangerously close to the sea, even as erosion worsens.
Public records confirm this reality.
Patricelli bought his home on Ocean Drive only nine months ago, but he was hardly alone. Along the stretch of beach near where his house was located, at least five other homes were sold last year – and at least two were sold this year – according to property records in Deir County. The other home, which collapsed this week, was purchased in late 2019.
Matthew Story, who lives near Raleigh, bought a house on the ocean below Patricelli in November.
He said he is confident his house is among the safest on the street, in part because it was relocated from the coast in 2018 and backed by new, deeper pillars. “Not every house on the street will fall,” he said. But, he added, “the erosion this year was almost unbelievable. I’m definitely worried about that. “
Story said about 60 feet of the beach in front of his home disappeared during storms and other harsh weather conditions in the winter and spring. And he said the collapse of two of his neighbors’ homes affected everyone around them. He is concerned about the value of property, the impact of debris on the environment and public perceptions of the real dangers.
“The whole thing is just embarrassing,” Story said. “I have a wife and two small children and I subsidize part of my income with this rental property.”
Local authorities have clarified that some nearby houses are in danger of the same fate as those in the ocean.
Noah Gilam, director of planning in Deir County, said about a dozen oceanfront houses in Rodante had been considered dangerous this year. Homeowners receive such a designation after local authorities inspect the land to check for problems with septic systems, structural integrity and other areas, he said.
If the property is considered dangerous, Gillam said, staff will turn off the power to ensure the home remains unoccupied. They also inform homeowners that they must order a contractor to remove the rubble if or when the sea takes their homes.
“The rate of erosion definitely seems to be increasing in certain areas,” Gilam said, adding that even unnamed storms can sometimes cause serious damage to homes unprotected by dunes or near the water’s edge.
This trend is likely to continue.
“It’s important for people to understand that coastal systems are feeling the effects of sea level rise and climate change today,” said Reide Corbett, a coastal oceanographer at the University of East Carolina and executive director of the Coastal Research Institute. “This is not something that has been going on for a decade. That’s something that’s happening. “
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The drama house, which is collapsing this week, although not unexpected, offered a final reminder of the challenge facing low-lying and barrier islands, Corbett said. The combination of rising sea levels, worsening erosion and more intense and persistent storms is likely to cause more chaos in the future.
“We need to think about how we are evolving and evolving in a way that leads to a more sustainable community going forward,” Corbett said.
Patricelli knows that some people may find it unwise to buy a home on the ocean, where erosion is a known problem, hurricanes are an annual threat and sea levels are rising.
He said the sellers had revealed the ways in which they had tried to fortify the house, and that he had bought flood insurance, which seemed necessary given the property’s location. He said he was not sure how much insurance he would pay for his loss.
By the time the house fell, Patricelli said he and his sister were in the process of moving it away from the waves, but their time was up.
“I knew there was a risk of living near water, but I certainly didn’t think I would lose the house in eight or nine months,” he said, adding: “I knew erosion was happening there. I didn’t know what speed was going on. … We really thought we could move the house and save it. ”
Patricelli said he and his neighbor had hired the same contractor to help clear the rubble of their homes.
But even this is a complex task.
National park officials said the wreckage spread at least 15 miles off the coastline. The agency invited the public to help clean up the beach on Thursday and Friday, and said “additional volunteer events will be announced in the coming days.”
Patricelli said he and other homeowners nearby, many of whom also live outside the state, have shared emails with advice and encouragement and linked to growing threats. “It’s a really great little community,” he said, noting he hoped to recover if this time away from the ocean.
Patricelli said he knew some places were more risky than others: “It was a bet that went wrong. But one who got confused earlier than he had imagined.
Although it is easy to ask why anyone would buy a house so close to the ocean, he said, climate change is affecting people across the country and around the world. In California, for example, he has seen entire neighborhoods engulfed in forest fires, where such disasters once seemed unlikely.
“What I learn from all this is that climate change is a real thing for all of us. It doesn’t matter if you live on the ocean, in a forest or on a river, “Patricelli said.
“I don’t know if there’s a place where you’re really safe from climate change right now.”
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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