Four unoccupied homes along North Carolina's Outer Banks collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean over the weekend after a violent winter storm battered the coast with hurricane-force winds, towering surf and rare snowfall. The dramatic collapses unfolded in the village of Buxton, where a bystander captured video of one house buckling and sliding into the churning water as waves tore through its stilts.
Photos taken by the National Park Service showed piles of debris left along the shoreline, including mangled lumber, insulation and household waste. The Outer Banks' narrow, low-lying barrier islands have been eroding for years as rising seas swallow the land, but the pace of destruction has accelerated to alarming levels. Prior to this latest storm, more than two dozen houses had collapsed since 2020, most in extreme weather.
The powerful nor'easter storm delivered blizzard conditions to parts of the Carolinas and Virginia, bringing heavy snow, gusts topping 60mph and high tides that proved catastrophic for the fragile barrier islands. Since 2020, a total of 31 homes have fallen into the ocean along Hatteras Island, including more than a dozen in just the past few months. The most recent failure occurred on Tower Circle Road, a hotspot for repeated collapses.
Many of the houses were once set hundreds of feet back from the shoreline, but relentless coastal flooding and beach erosion have left entire rows of properties sitting directly in the ocean. 'It's not just boards and nails,' said Bill King, president of the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association, which helps coordinate volunteer cleanup efforts. 'You've got fiberglass insulation, fuel, septic, all of it. And when it's moving in the surf, it's a nightmare.'
