An Outer Banks town is falling into the ocean. Can Rodanthe be saved?

Ralph Patricelli bought his oceanfront home in Rodanthe in September 2021 knowing it was on borrowed time. Other beachfront homes in the neighborhood had already fallen into the Atlantic Ocean, victims of years of erosion and constant storms sweeping Hatteras Island. Patricelli knew eventually, he’d have to move his second home back from the ocean.

“I felt like the house had been there since the ’80s — it’s survived hurricanes and storms for decades,” Patricelli said. “Is it really going to go anywhere for a few more years?”

Two months after he bought it, before the family had a chance to enjoy its new home even once, a storm damaged the septic system. Patricelli then found himself in a race to save the house, rushing to find the money and expert contractors needed to move it away from the waves.

It already was too late.

On May 10, 2022, nine months after he bought the 2,600-square-foot home at 24235 Ocean Drive, it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean during a nor’easter. His home was the first of two to fall in the ocean that day.

“It was a shock,” Patricelli said. “We lost 20 feet of beachfront in just a few months. It was incredible how fast it happened.”

Patricelli’s attempt to save his family’s dream home on a strip of sand echoes the larger-scale dilemma facing federal, state and local leaders who have worked for years to the stem the storm damage, relentless sea level rise and erosion eating away at Rodanthe, one of the northern villages of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

But like Patricelli, will they find it’s too late?

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Ground zero

Over the past two years, the Outer Banks have become a “ground zero” for the snowballing impact of climate change, with Rodanthe making international headlines as four beach homes have fallen into the ocean since early 2022.

Erosion on the Outer Banks, and Hatteras Island in particular, is nothing new. It’s a constantly shifting barrier island that acts to protect the mainland from the impact of coastal storms. But over the past decade, the beach along a 1.8-mile section of Rodanthe is eroding at a rapid rate, losing 12 to 20 feet of beachfront each year, according to studies conducted for Dare County. Coupled with sea-rise levels of seven feet over the past two decades, a section of Rodanthe is quickly disappearing.

At its July 17 meeting, the Dare County Board of Commissioners approved funding half of a $3 million Corps of Engineers beach nourishment feasibility study commissioned by U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, who has pledged to come up with federal dollars for the other half.

The study aims to determine if nourishment in Rodanthe is feasible, and if so, how much it would cost. Commissioners also gave themselves an out, asking for a written guarantee from the Corps of Engineers that if at any point, the study finds beach nourishment isn’t feasible, funding will stop.

“At any stage, we could call off the dogs,” Dare County Manager Bobby Outten told the board, which voted unanimously to fund the county’s half of the study.

“The next step is to get this study done and put a price tag on it. We can start working on our state and federal governments, but we’ve got to know what to ask for.”

County officials and the National Park Service say there is no long-term strategy for the vulnerable homes along Ocean Drive, or the rapidly eroding beach, but nourishment would provide respite for perhaps five years at a time. Making it happen even once may be impossible, however.

The park service must get federal approval for such projects and the Federal Emergency Management Agency won’t provide funds for beach nourishment unless the endangered shoreline impacts transit or emergency services. The row of homes along Ocean Drive, private beach homes mostly built in the 1980s, don’t qualify.

“Little roads with houses on them are not going to be a priority,” said David Hallac, superintendent of the Outer Banks National Park sites.

Dare County officials have estimated that locally funded nourishment projects, done every five or so years, would cost about $30 million to $40 million for the endangered stretch in Rodanthe. Dare County’s beach nourishment funds, which are paid through vacation occupancy taxes, raised $15.7 million in 2022, and that was with record seasonal occupancy, Outten said — not even half the amount needed. In other parts of the Outer Banks, county nourishment funds are supplemented by tax districts, but taxing Rodanthe residents wouldn’t collect enough to make much difference.

“We’re not going to tax our way out of this,” Dare County Board of Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard told property owners at a meeting earlier this year.

For years, sandbags have been one method of holding off the ocean in Rodanthe, home to the famed blue-shuttered cottage from the 2008 film, “Nights in Rodanthe.” Two years after the movie debuted, the cottage, now called the Inn at Rodanthe, also was in danger of falling into the ocean, but was purchased and moved back from the beach.

Now, moving a house is one of the only choices left to owners of oceanfront homes on Ocean Drive. That’s not as easy as it might sound.

Some owners say they have been stymied by 18-month wait lists for companies that move houses. Others have chosen to do nothing since insurance doesn’t pay until the house collapses, county and park service officials said.

“Insurance won’t believe it’s not a rich person’s problem,” Outten said.

As he tried to save his beach house, Patricelli said he first had to find a new lot, line up contractors to move the house and make arrangements with his sister to borrow the $200,000 needed. The work and expense is too much for some owners.

“I’m just an average Joe,” Patricelli said. “I was in way over my head.”

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‘We need to save Rodanthe’

At an emotionally charged January public meeting, residents and property owners crammed the Rodanthe community center, some begging local officials and the park service to do something to save their village.

Preserving Hatteras Island isn’t just important for tourism dollars. Hundreds of endangered sea turtles nest on Hatteras beaches, and the island is a critical habitat for several species of shorebirds, including threatened American oystercatchers and piping plovers.

“With no beach there will be no visitors, there will be no sea turtles, there will be no shore bird habitat,” said Jett Ferebee, who owns a campground on Hatteras Island. “I just think we need some federal help. Congress has billions and billions of dollars set aside for park service, we’re just looking for $20 to $30 million. We need to save Rodanthe, it’s that simple.”

But is it even possible?

Cape Hatteras National Seashore has been battling sea level rise and erosion for decades, with expensive measures taken to keep the island — which makes up about 25% of Dare County’s total occupancy-tax revenue — open for business. In April 2022, the state opened the Rodanthe Bridge, known locally as the “Jug Handle Bridge,” over the Pamlico Sound, bypassing a narrow stretch of N.C. 12 prone to ocean overwash flooding.

Now, nature is taking its course where the road used to be, and some suggest the stretch of Ocean Drive should be left to the same fate.

“In the 1980s we started this discussion about Rodanthe erosion,” Outten said. “People thought then we were just throwing money in the ocean.”

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The inevitable

In a May study by Western Carolina University, researchers noted that Rodanthe has one of the highest erosion rates on the East Coast, and they questioned if repeated beach nourishment is possible or practical.

Nourishment projects must be done every five years, adding up to a cost of $120 million over 15 years.

“Even with beach nourishment, there will be periods of time between sand placement episodes when the beach will narrow, and the most exposed homes will be in the waves,” wrote Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University.

The study estimated that buying out the owners of the most at-risk homes, 80 of them, would cost close to $43 million. Removing the properties would likely give Rodanthe a viable beach for another 15 to 25 years, the study showed.

“Doing nothing has resulted in numerous high-profile incidents of homes collapsing into the sea, while septic tanks are exhumed and broken open,” Young wrote. “These events cause both environmental harm and a risk to public safety and health. Clearly, doing nothing is the worst option.”

Stanley Riggs, a geologist with East Carolina University who has studied the changing North Carolina coastline for decades, says building bridges and beach nourishment projects won’t save the shoreline.

After decades of growth and development, property owners and local leaders want new sand for their beaches to keep the tourism economy churning.

“But the governments are no longer capable of subsidizing this exercise in futility, particularly when the average beach nourishment project in N.C. only lasts between 1.75 and 2.5 years,” Riggs said in an interview with the University of North Carolina Press back in 2011..

”Our coastal tourism bubble is beginning to feel the consequences of long-term change, we have reached the threshold. The cost of ‘holding the line’ is rapidly escalating.”

Riggs, co-author of the book “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast,” said the time has come to accept the inevitable: a watery future for Rodanthe.

“The forces that are involved at the land-sea-air intersection are greater than our long-term engineering abilities to protect the status quo,” he wrote. “This is both the beauty and power that draws people to the coast. So, let’s get serious and build an economy that is based upon the dynamics of change and learn to live as an equal partner with our awesome coastal system.”

Patricelli’s love of the Outer Banks hasn’t diminished, but he doesn’t think he’ll go back to Rodanthe. The pain of losing the house is too much.

“It’s a magical spot for anyone who’s spent time there,” he said. “I don’t know what the future is for Rodanthe, but I think it’s pretty grim. For our family, it was too late. Just seeing how fast it happened to us, it may be too late overall.”

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Rodanthe timeline

May 29, 2020: A beach house at 23238 Sea Oats Drive collapses in the waves overnight. Vacationers were staying there at the time; no one was injured.

Feb. 9, 2022: A five-bedroom, three-bath beachfront home at 24183 Ocean Drive falls into the ocean. No one was there, though the home was in a vacation rental program.

March 4, 2022: Dare County officials condemn 11 beachfront homes in Rodanthe in danger of collapse, removing electrical boxes and tagging them uninhabitable.

May 10, 2022: The ocean claims two unoccupied homes within 12 hours during a spring nor’easter, the first at 24235 Ocean Drive that morning and the second at 24265 Ocean Drive that afternoon.

Jan. 8, 2023: Hundreds gather at the Rodanthe community center to hear local, state and National Park Service officials discuss what can be done about the continuing home collapses and rapid erosion along the oceanfront.

March 13, 2023: Another unoccupied house, this one at 23228 East Point Drive, falls into the ocean. The three-bedroom home had been sold to new owners in 2019.

July 17, 2023: The Dare County Board of Commissioners approves funding a Corps of Engineers beach nourishment feasibility study for the 1.8-mile stretch of endangered homes in Rodanthe.