Jan Wesner Childs and Ron Brackett
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Dozens of buildings remain in danger of collapsing or falling into the ocean in Florida, after a double whammy of Hurricane Ian in September and Hurricane Nicole this week caused extreme erosion that left homes hanging on top of shear cliffs of washed-out sand.
Several have already been completely destroyed, in some cases falling away into the Atlantic Ocean piece by piece, along with everything inside.
“It just goes to show you what we are in the big scheme of things," Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood told The Weather Channel Friday. "We’re insignificant when Mother Nature comes to get you.”
(MORE: Katrina Survivor Describes Hurricane Nicole Experience)
The bulk of the structures affected are in the Volusia County communities of Daytona Beach Shores and Wilbur-by-the-Sea. The area is on Florida's Atlantic Coast, about an hour northeast of Orlando.
Nicole made landfall farther south on the coast and moved over the state Thursday, but the pounding waves started rolling in a few days ahead of the storm.
On Friday, Volusia County officials released a list of buildings they say are threatened, including 24 condominium or hotel buildings that have been evacuated. The full extent of the damage - and the danger - is still being assessed.
In this aerial view, homes are partially toppled onto the beach after Hurricane Nicole came ashore on Nov. 10, 2022, in Daytona Beach, Fla. Nicole came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane before weakening to a tropical storm as it moved across the state.Christian Oehmke has lived in Wilbur-by-the-Sea his entire life. He described seeing a house “hanging by a thread over the dune.”
“We were standing there watching and we started to hear some crack, and the house started to fall into the beach,” he told the New York Times. “It made such a huge sound, a crashing, like a car accident. Insulation and glass started flying up. It was wild.”
“It’s pretty surreal,” Oehmke said, adding that storms these days “are a lot more powerful than when I was growing up.”
(MORE: Hurricane Nicole Recap)
In nearby New Smyrna Beach, Hurricane Ian had already washed away the dunes protecting homes.
Joel Blake told WFTV he went to check on his home on Thursday and found the sand under the foundation was gone.
He tried to support the house with concrete blocks and timbers, but it was too late.
“You could hear cracking and cracking, and then it just went in,” Blake said.
At least five deaths are being connected to the storm in Florida.
Early Thursday, a woman aboard a yacht docked in the Brevard County town of Cocoa called 911 to say her husband was in distress. When police arrived, the boat was being pounded by waves, according a Facebook post from police. The officers began CPR on the man.
They had to secure the boat with ropes after it broke loose from the dock. Eventually, the man, 68-year-old Thomas Whittle of Port Canaveral, was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. His cause of death has not been determined.
Four other deaths are being connected to Nicole, all in the Orlando area. Two people died when they were electrocuted by downed power lines and two others were killed in a vehicle crash believed to be related to the weather.
The storm also washed out portions of Florida State Road A1A, wrecked piers and jetties and knocked down trees and power lines.
About 300,000 power outages were reported on Thursday. By Friday evening, about 8,000 remained.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
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