WaPo: “Early last year, a house crumbled into the sea in this small Outer Banks community, home to some of the most rapid rates of erosion and sea level rise on the East Coast.
Not long after, another house fell. And then another.
Wave after wave, the ocean had clawed away at the beach until the stilted homes finally gave way. The collapses spread debris — and anxiety — for more than a dozen miles along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. A video that captured one house surrendering to the surfin May went viral, bringing national attention to the urgency of the problem along this scenic stretch of coast.
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As similar shifts befall other communities, scientists say, millions of acres of U.S. land and hundreds of thousands of homes and offices could slip below swelling tide lines over time. Properties in vulnerable areas could lose value, harming homeowners and sapping local tax bases.
“This is a national and a global problem,” said Reide Corbett, an oceanographer and executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute at East Carolina University, who sees in Rodanthe a glimpse of the quandaries that await other places as seas rise, storms intensify and deteriorating shorelines creep closer to human developments.”