If you are just joining my blog, I am in the midst of answering the question: Why would anyone want to live on a coastal island? After all, no less an authority than Orrin H. Pilkey, Jr., deemed "America’s foremost philosopher of the beaches," by the New York Times, and James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Geology at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University writes: “We strongly recommend against barrier island property purchase. Better to choose a high elevation inland site.”
Over the next few weeks, I am focusing my blogs on drilling down into Pilkey's recommendation for several reasons. First, I live on a barrier island and I own two ocean front properties on that barrier island, Bogue Banks, in Emerald Isle, NC. And, I've owned these two properties for well over 20 years. Second, I am a real estate agent who sells real estate in Emerald Isle, NC and elsewhere on the Crystal Coast. Third, I know Dr. Pilkey's research intimately. Fourth, I know Dr. Pilkey, personally.
In the last number of blogs, I reviewed the significant weather events that can wreck havoc on our homes, our communities and our country. And, quite frankly, the havoc is not pretty and it is quite difficult to escape the havoc. So, in the face of such enormous weather events why do we live, in increasing numbers, and continue to purchase property, in increasing dollar amounts, in America? Well, the simple answer is “mitigation.” Mitigating circumstances could be economical, they could be cultural, or emotional. Economically, people tend to settle near bodies of water because they relied on water, initially, for transportation, agriculture, recreation and to sustain themselves and their communities and they continue to do so, today.
A disaster-prone area may be where a community’s ancestors have been living for generations. Displacing people from the place where their families grew up could leave these people feeling culturally abandoned or emotionally uprooted. For many, choosing to live in locations which may suffer from potentially devastating weather events is preferable to a loss of place and culture from which there is no recovery. This is especially true when a severe weather disaster may occur once every ten, 50 or 100 years. Confronted with such rare events, most people are unwilling to invest in mitigation and preparedness. Nonetheless, as the preponderance of evidence in this chapter shows, defining natural hazards, measuring vulnerability, and evaluating the risks are essential for evaluating mitigation techniques aimed at reducing the impacts and potential for loss of life and property everywhere in the United States, and not exclusively on barrier island property.
But, as this is a blog about living on an island, in the next number of blogs, I will examine how mitigation techniques have been employed on the barrier islands along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. That being said, to learn more about life in Emerald Isle, NC, go to my website, www.EIHomesforSale.com and request my free Guide to Living Were You Vacation or text your email address to: 919-308-2292.
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