THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 16, 1994 TAG: 9412160553
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BUXTON LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
When workers completed the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in 1870, more than 2,000 feet of beach protected it from the sea.
Today, a skinny strip of sand - often less than 150 feet wide - separates the tower from the tide. Waves have washed over walls of canvas-covered sandbags.
During Hurricane Gordon last month, the ocean burst through a row of sand dunes, crumbled a concrete-and-steel groin, and surrounded the beacon's octagonal base with a moat more than 15 feet deep.
National Park Service officials said the damage was the worst the Outer Banks icon has sustained in more than a decade.
``I think it's stable right now,'' said an engineer with the service, Charlie Snow, on Tuesday as crews removed rubble from around the eroding seawall that sits just south of the lighthouse. ``But this lighthouse is still in danger. A really bad storm could do a lot more harm to its already vulnerable base.''
The park service's wish list includes plans to save the 280-foot tower by sliding it 2,500 feet to the southwest. Engineers hope to keep the lighthouse upright on trolleys during the move. But officials can't find the estimated $8.8 million needed to pay for the project.
So they're shoring up the shoreline instead.
Two weeks ago, crews laid 380 sandbags along the beach south and north of the lighthouse. The $100,000 project replaced damaged sandbags and added hundreds of new ones. In some places southeast of the lighthouse, sandbags now are piled more than 8 feet high.
This week, workers began building a steel Band-aid around the quarter-century-old groin that sits farthest south of the lighthouse. The concrete-and-steel structure juts 150 feet into the sea, perpendicular to the shoreline, and helps protect the tower. Hurricane Gordon tore it apart.
In repairing the seawall, workers first will remove ballast rock from around it. The 150-foot-tall crane doing the job stretches almost to the lighthouse's balcony. Some of the rocks it is scooping weigh more than a ton.
Once the area around the groin is cleared, crews will drive 30-foot-long steel pilings into the sand along its sides. Then, they'll erect 150 steel sheets between the pilings. The Z-shaped sheets are 2 feet wide, three-fourths of an inch thick, and weigh 3,000 pounds each.
Marine Construction of Norfolk is handling the $356,000 project, which will take seven workers about 75 days. by CNB