File:Coast watch (1979) (20649719522).jpg

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_0 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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front four of the Pittsburgh Steelers. But as the waves chew it away, that dune is buying you time. Time to recall certain scriptures, not the least of which speaks to the practice of building one's house on sand. What if your house is built low to the ground, on a solid masonry slab or foundation? You're sitting pretty, right? That's what the people at Holden's Beach thought in 1954, until Hurricane Hazel taught them different- ly. Down there, you're in the combat zone. And because buildings are bouyant, your house is about to become a boat. Floating houses come to rest in interesting, asymmetrical configurations, but on someone else's property. Even if the house has been bolted to the foundation and holds on, the surge will probably dismember it, beginning with the weakest section. Or, the water will scour soil from under the foundation, and whole sections will collapse. Or, floating battering rams— campers, picnic tables and trailers— will ram great holes in the walls. That's all the foothold the winds need to finish the job. But let's assume, since you've been ahead of the game so far, that your house is built up on pilings, AS EVERY BEACH HOUSE SHOULD BE, and is above the storm surge. The surge passes on under the house, with nothing much down there to shove around. Don't relax yet. If the floor frame of the house is just nailed to the pilings, those waves cresting against the floor may just lift the whole house free. If the floor frame is well made, and anchored to the piles with W carriage bolts for each supporting pile, and the piles are notched only an inch or so, you may be safe. By now, the last of that little sand dune is washing across the street. If your pilings were sunk only about as deep as the dune, so that what used to be under ground isn't, your house is about to become a ship. Those piles will behave something like bowling pins when the next wave rolls through. Okay, let's assume you're blessed with the perfect beach house: pilings sunk at least eight feet into the profile of the shoreline; metal bolts and fasteners holding everything together; well-fastened roofing and well- shuttered windows. Odds are you'll make it. That is, unless this baby turns into one of those "200-year storms," so called because they're expected to hit a shoreline only about every couple of centuries. Or, unless your neighbor's house is less perfect than yours. That is when you honestly, truly, get that sinking feeling. When you see that three- bedroom house next door rock, slowly, to one side, snap its piles like pencils, belly-flop into the water, and glide straight for you. . . Not a direct hit. Just a chunk is mis- sing from one corner of your house, but suddenly, your house starts trembling, the water-fattened winds come blitzing through the hole. The rugs go squishy with water. The wallboard resembles something like painted oatmeal, and the siding is springing off one side of the house. Let's say you're extremely lucky. Your well-constructed beach house is not a total loss. That is, if you can get it back together in time for the next storm. These big, bad wolves like to run in packs. Remember? On August 30 and Sep- tember 10, 1954, Carol and Edna came chasing through like pranksters. Then, on October 15, just when everybody was getting good and sick of cleaning up after hurricanes. Hazel came howl- ing. She licked up miles of dunes, leveled hundreds of houses and killed 19 people.
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Wave action scours soil from under shallow, masonry foundations, so that walls collapse and the wind gains leverage against the roof

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