For years, homes along Oahu’s legendary North Shore have teetered atop sand berms as waves tear away at their foundations, lanai and front yards. But in the dark hours of Monday morning, a loud cracking sound from one of those homes pierced the air, waking neighbors as the modest structure slid down onto the beach amid frothy waves.
The collapsed house has added to an already treacherous situation along this stretch of coastline just west of Sunset Beach that is increasingly being threatened by stronger storms and sea-level rise.
The shoreline is littered with heavy tarps, sandbags and boulders that homeowners have erected in a desperate attempt to stave off the ocean, and now with debris from the house at 59-181-H Ke Nui Road that came to rest at a 45-degree angle just off the Monster Mush surf break.
Despite the tangled mess, surfers launched themselves from the shoreline to paddle out into 6- to 10-foot waves, the remnants of a major northwest swell that pounded the shore over the weekend with waves as high as 24 feet.
A resident of the collapsed home declined an interview request, saying he was tired of talking to the media. He then placed yellow caution tape around his home.
Gabriel Tennberg, who lives down the shore, was among the local residents who came to peer at the sideways house where furniture and appliances had slid to the inner wall that sloped toward the ocean.
“It’s totally unsafe,” he said as he looked at the wreckage of the house and the debris-strewn shoreline.
In addition to backwash sucking boards and concrete into the ocean, it’s easy to get trapped amid the strong waves and piles of “burritos” — long sandbags attached to tarps — that leave little to no escape route mauka of the shoreline.
Hawaii policymakers, legislators and coastal geologists have talked for years about the need to orchestrate a managed retreat from the shoreline amid rising seas and coastal erosion, but there’s been little in the way of crafting an exit strategy.
“There’s obviously a pattern of not long-term thinking and long-term solutions,” Tennberg said. “They just Band-Aid, Band-Aid, Band-Aid. That’s the part that drives me nuts the most.”
He worries someone will get hurt.
In addition to losing lateral access along the shoreline, he said the City and County of Honolulu has been closing off beach access points that are threatened by erosion.
Keenan Wiech, 18, has grown up surfing along this stretch of coastline known as the Seven Mile Miracle for its abundance of prime surf breaks and stunning beauty.
“It’s pretty shocking,” he said as he looked at the wooden house resting on the beach.
He said the refraction of the waves off the increasingly littered and hardened shoreline sometimes makes the nearby surf breaks bumpy and exposes more of the reef during west swells.
It’s not clear how long it will take to move the house off the beach, but Gundaker Works, a general contractor, had already been called in to assist.
The collapsed home is likely a harbinger of more to come.
The state Department of Land and Natural Resources, which is in charge of conserving and protecting Hawaii’s natural resources, including its shorelines, has been taking a harder line toward homeowners scrambling to install fixes along the shoreline to protect their private properties at the expense of the public beaches.
In recent weeks the agency has been sending out warning letters to neighboring homeowners who have been installing new or revamped burritos. The hard sandbags and tarps can exacerbate erosion and are supposed to be in place only temporarily, but property owners have been refusing to remove them after they expire.
DLNR Chair Suzanne Case, who was on the scene to assess the situation Monday morning, warned there is little that can be done for homeowners who have been clamoring for permanent seawalls and boulders, which are largely forbidden in Hawaii because they destroy beaches.
“It’s just a dangerous situation and a sad one,” Case said. “Climate change, sea level rise, wave energy in new patterns, new powerful waves. This is a beach that is so important to the public, and these houses are built on sand berms and there is just really no way they can last.”
Case said she hopes homeowners will take the time to find alternatives.
“This is just a real wake-up call,” she said.
For property owners, those alternatives largely mean removing their homes or, if possible, moving them back on their lots, a prospect many homeowners are unhappy with.
Todd Dunphy, who has a nearby beachfront home, confronted Case on the beach, asking for a burrito.
“We’re desperate. We need help,” Dunphy told her. “We need to save some homes.
“We need rocks. We need something now. That’s what we need, really. We are asking, we are begging for the DLNR to give us some help. That guy lost his house. Does anybody care?”
Case said, “We do care.” But she also stressed there is only so much the government can do.
“It’s a terrible situation but there is no easy solution,” she said.
Meanwhile, a new swell is set to move in today, and on Monday it didn’t appear that anyone was in charge of warning beachgoers of the hazards along the coastline.
Jim Ireland, director of Honolulu’s Department of Emergency Services, said during a news conference in Honolulu that the Honolulu Fire Department initially responded to the 911 call of the collapsed home and that there were no injuries. He said ocean safety inspected the area for hazards such as glass, debris and nails.
