Home on North Carolina Coast Washes Into the Ocean
An unoccupied home on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore was seen collapsing into the ocean in a video posted to Twitter by the Cape Hatteras National Park Service. The area’s NPS also confirmed that it was the “second unoccupied house collapse of the day at the Seashore.”
As an article in VICE reveals, the home is still listed on Zillow for $380,000 and promises “amazing views of the beach.”
It’s difficult not to think about climate change when watching videos like this. Of course, no singular instance of its effects is proof of anything concrete, but the consensus about rising sea levels is, at this point, pretty much undeniable.
The same article in VICE sheds some light about the surrounding areas, including the fact that “in nearby Avon, homeowners are paying an additional 50 percent in property taxes to try to prevent the only road into town from washing away due to sea level rise, and officials there are considering whether the community has a long term future at all.”
The Outer Banks, a 200-mile string of islands that stretches from North Carolina into Virginia, is well-known as one of the most beautiful places in the country. There’s even a TV show, “Outer Banks,” that’s become an incredibly popular teen soap opera on Netflix.
In recent years, however, the area has made headlines not because of its idyllic views, but because it’s crucial to understanding what climate change in the United States will look like. Between this, raging wildfires in California, and extreme droughts in the southwest, it seems like extreme weather events are here, and they’re here to stay.
