How could they possibly have foreseen?
Bless those Salisbury Beach people, they plaster photos of their damaged expensive houses that are a few feet from the ocean all over their Facebook group so that the whole world can see how entitled they are. Check it out:
The fucking ocean is right fucking there you fucking fools what did you think would happen?
It’s so predictable (everything about this) that it’s depressing. The building on ludicrously at risk locations, the lack of understanding that results in wasted effort and expense, the demands that someone else subsidise their bad choices, just the sheer wilful ignorance of it all.
Other than the most massive solid rock that’s well above water level, coastlines are subject to movement on human timescales. Especially sandy beaches that are essentially at high-tide level anyway. The City I used to live in (Christchurch) was built at the foot of volcanic hills nestled around an estuary. For all my life I can recall issues with erosion of the sandy spit, which of course had been built on – although not quite as stupidly as this – endangering homes. Even the volcanic hills are not safe, as was demonstrated by our earthquakes. Basalt is great, scoria not so much. Back when I was doing my Masters degree I came across a drawing showing the spit location over the period since CHCH was founded (at that time 140+ years). It had moved a LOT – both prograde and retrograde. Indeed, much of the land Christchurch was built on was swampy marsh that hadn’t been there just a few thousand years earlier. Humans have enormous capacity to be dumb and then make it somebody else’s problem.
Amazing how much further back the beach houses in Newport, OR are (also on top of volcanic cliffs) than these… Tsunamis are still a risk obviously but compared to that…
Watch them all move to the desert Southwest, where once again, water will be a problem….
Those houses are indeed far too close to the water and waves. No sympathy whatsoever for their owners, who should have known better than to build in an hazardous zone.
They said I was DAFT to build a castle in a swamp!
J.A. It’s utterly typical though. The whole east coast of the US is like that, pretty much. Maybe not Maine, which I think is much more rocks than sand, but from Massachusetts to Florida, houses are built practically in the ocean.
On the Florida island that I’ve regularly visited for over 45 years now (my parents moved to Florida back then) the natural barrier dunes have been preserved and are covered with native ground cover, and as a result they help protect the homes behind them and the beaches are lovely and all open to the public.
I do have some sympathy for the owners. IMO it should have been the job of the some govermental agency to declare these pieces of land unfit to build on and to prohibit any building projects. As far as I undersand there are all kinds of zone regulations in the US about where one can build what. So who decided that one could build residential houses here?
Well, maybe a little. On the other hand I have no sympathy for those who try to take the beach as their own private playground. (I have no idea if that’s the case here.)
They ruined a dune ecosystem (probably) all so they could enjoy an amazing location for a while. I hope none of them get insurance money for the damage.
Axy: Are u sum kinda commm uuuu nnist? Callin’ for Big Gubmint to interfere with the property choices of the top 5%? Horrors.
My favorite was a n Deep Red Trumpland Butte County where the fire tragically wiped out an entire town built in fire prone canyons (Paradise). one of the intrepid god and guns residents stated the government should subsidize his semi faux rural lifestyle because he didn’t want to live in a big city or suburb with those people.
Late to the party here but last night I watched a B movie called Swim, about just such a complex of “condominiums” about two inches from the ocean in Southern California – anyway there’s a storm, the sea invades, a shark invades and chases the family around the house – yea to the shark, who was quite cruelly murdered by these interlopers.
Send in the sharks!