Another house has collapsed on the NC coast. Will more fall as storms near?

An oceanfront home in Buxton collapsed onto the beach Tuesday, and its loss may be a harbinger of a destructive fall and winter to come along the North Carolina Outer Banks.

The home that fell Tuesday was on Tower Circle in Buxton, an unincorporated community north of Cape Hatteras on Hatteras Island. Property records and historic photos show the home was well away from the ocean and behind a vegetated dune when it was built in 1969.

But a series of storms, which have occurred more frequently in recent years due to climate change, carved away the beach and the dune and brought the surf up to the pilings of the home and a string of others to its north and south.

Mike Barber, spokesman for Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which manages the coastline from south of Nags Head to the southern tip of Ocracoke, said park officials had been in contact with the homeowner and had been watching the home. Before its collapse Tuesday afternoon, Barber said, the owner had arranged for a contractor to begin cleaning up the mess as soon as it was safe.

Barber said park workers immediately deployed to gather and remove materials from the failed home that were carried down the beach or into the surf.

Barber said the stretch of the beach where the house sat has been closed to the public since Hurricane Erin in August. The center of that storm never came closer than 200 miles to shore, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. But it was such a massive and powerful storm, generating waves as high as 50 feet near its center, that it caused severe erosion in some places along the East Coast.

Dare County Planning Director Noah Gillam said Wednesday that after Erin passed, inspectors tagged 34 homes in Buxton as uninhabitable, “decertifying” them for occupancy. A house that’s been decertified may be repairable, Gillam said, and if repairs are made it can be recertified for occupancy.

“It just depends how much damage there is,” Gillam said. Some of the tagged houses had structural damage or had their septic tanks uncovered by the surf, he said; others had only lost the staircases up which delighted vacationers had carried bags of beach clothes, bathing suits and sandwich-making supplies.

A group of homes in Rodanthe, about 25 miles north of Buxton on Hatteras Island, is similarly imperiled, Gillam and Barber said. “There are probably dozens of homes endangered on the oceanfront if you count Rodanthe and Buxton,” Barber said Wednesday. “These are houses that are in the water at most times of the day, depending on the tides.

“They have received some impacts from waves and erosion, and you’ll see decks that are unstable, pilings that have come off the house and have traveled down the seashore, lying on the beach or in the ocean.”

Erin also caused ocean overwash on N.C. Highway 12 on Hatteras Island and Ocrocoke. Besides Erin, some of the homes were battered by Potential Topical Cyclone Eight in mid-September 2024, and punishing winds along the Outer Banks over the past two weeks. From Friday to Tuesday, the area had seen winds of 30 mph to 38 mph each day, strong enough to whip up a rough surf that could shake a home’s stilt supports and use broken bits of lumber as battering rams.

Homes undermined by the ocean create unique problems. Homeowners who have federal flood insurance often say their policies won’t pay for a home’s removal until after it has collapsed, and even then there can be a dispute over whether the claim is payable depending on whether it was caused by flooding or erosion.

The National Park Service has experimented with using special funds to remove houses in imminent danger of collapse in order to prevent degradation of the beach and the scattering of construction debris, which can travel for miles.

Forecasters have said the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season will be busier than average, with up to 19 named storms, including up to 10 hurricanes, up to five of them major storms of Category 3 or higher.

Tropical Storm Gabrielle formed on Wednesday in the Atlantic and is expected to move north or northwest, but the immediate forecast has the storm turning away from the East Coast by Monday.

Forecasters are watching another disturbance in the eastern Atlantic for possible development next week. Hurricane season runs through Nov. 30.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.

This story was originally published September 17, 2025 at 5:09 PM with the headline "Another house has collapsed on the NC coast. Will more fall as storms near?."

Martha Quillin

The News & Observer

919-829-8989

Martha Quillin writes about climate change and the environment. She has covered North Carolina news, culture, religion and the military since joining The News & Observer in 1987.