Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 19, 1995 TAG: 9508220010
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium
The damage inflicted on beachfront homes in North Carolina and Virginia was Felix's worst - so far.
The beating Felix delivered was unusual for a hurricane. Most race across the shore in hours. But Felix's strong northeast winds gnawed on beaches from northern Florida to New Jersey for three days.
The storm's lesson: A developed beachfront is like a garden that must be tended. Beaches must be rebuilt periodically with large quantities of sand at a cost of about $2 million a mile.
Sand can vanish in erosion hot spots on the North Carolina coast at a rate of more than 20 feet a year. Near Oregon Inlet on the Outer Banks, 600 feet a year vanished over a four-year period, he said.
In the last 30 years, the beach at Sandbridge, just south of Norfolk, has gone from a width of about 200 yards to nothing during most normal high tides.
While the beach shrank, the community boomed - from 50 oceanfront houses to 243 today.
``If Felix had come ashore after slamming the coast for so long, there would have been total devastation at places like Sandbridge,'' said Orrin Pilkey, a geologist and expert in coastal issues at Duke University.
Help for Sandbridge has been hard to find.
The cause is unpopular with most of the city's 415,000 residents who resent oceanfront property owners. The City Council voted recently to support spreading sand on the beach because most Sandbridge property owners agreed to tax themselves to pick up $3.5 million of the initial $10 million cost.
by CNB