Houses on North Carolina's Hatteras Island are being lifted onto wheels and shifted inland as the Atlantic Ocean steadily erodes the slender barrier island. Since September, 19 homes have toppled into the sea, prompting a scramble to save surviving properties.
Barry Crum, a lifelong resident who runs the island's main house-moving service, said he had never been busier. More than a dozen homes are set to be moved or raised on stilts by Crum and his crew, including Cape Point Retreat, which was recently jacked onto girders and wheeled a few hundred feet back from the crashing waves. "I've seen a lot but I hadn't seen this kind of erosion this quickly before," Crum said.
The recent losses have staggered locals. In Buxton, the entire beach and sand dunes were wiped out, swallowing part of a neighbourhood. On 30 September, five houses collapsed within 45 minutes, and four more fell during the first two days of February. Resident Hunter Hicks, who filmed one collapse, described the sound: "You could hear a crackling sound, like lightning... it sounded like a bomb went off." He warned that without moving homes, "we will probably lose 20 more by the end of the year".
Coastal erosion is nothing new for the Outer Banks, where the Cape Hatteras lighthouse had to be moved in 1999 after losing more than 1,000 feet of land. But the accelerating pace of sea-level rise is turning the area into a "canary in the coalmine" for other east coast communities, according to Laura Moore, an expert in coastal change at the University of North Carolina. "There really is no long-term way to hold things in place up and down the entire eastern seaboard," she said.
Since 2020, 31 houses have been lost on Hatteras Island. The community, known for its resilience and dark humour, is adapting as best it can, but the challenges are mounting. Highway 12, the only road linking the island to the mainland, is occasionally severed by floodwaters, leaving residents reliant on ferries. As Moore noted, "What we are seeing is a real scramble to try to address these changes."
