'Frederic' erased 

 miles of houses 



Photo by Jerry Machemehl 



Frederic left open wounds in many Gulf Shores buildings 



On September 23, Spencer Rogers 

 picked his way through the odd, 

 broken stumps in the beach of Gulf 

 Shores, on the eastern side of Mobile 

 Bay, Alabama. 



The beach was deserted, almost 

 barren, as if it had been shaved, leav- 

 ing just the stumps, like razor stubble, 

 poking through the sand. Eleven days 

 before, those stumps were the wooden 

 pilings under houses, dozens of them. 

 Now most of those houses, or what 

 pieces remained of them, were strewn 

 through the woods far inland. 



Rogers, Sea Grant's coastal 

 engineering specialist, had come with 

 Jerry Machemehl to see first-hand 

 what happens to buildings during a 

 hurricane. Rogers and Machemehl 

 were on the beach, taking photographs 

 and searching the ruins for clues, long 

 before the major cleanup was 

 underway. 



"That stretch of beach had been 

 almost completely developed," Rogers 

 recalls. "When we saw it, most of the 

 houses were gone." 



Frederic was not an "extreme" 

 hurricane, or even an unusually severe 

 one. It was about average. But its 90 

 mph winds and 12-foot storm surge 

 had reshaped the coast, eroding as 

 much as 100 feet of shoreline, topping 

 dunes, submerging miles of land and 

 wrecking houses, condominiums and 

 motels. 



"The problem was not so much the 

 wind," Rogers says. "Most of those 

 houses could have taken the winds. 

 The problem was that the pilings, in 

 most cases, were either too short or in- 

 adequately attached to the floor struc- 

 ture." 



Rogers says that he found most of 

 the wrecked houses were toppled when 

 erosion removed sand from around the 

 pilings. When key pilings were ex- 

 posed, with no sand to support them, 

 they collapsed. Unbalanced on their 

 foundations, the houses then snapped 

 the remaining pilings and floated 

 away. 



"Most of the destruction could have 

 been prevented if they had just had 

 those pilings eight or ten feet deep, in- 

 stead of four or six," Rogers says. 



There were clues other than the 

 stumps. There were empty nail holes in 



the tops of pilings that used to support 

 houses. A few little spikes, Rogers says, 

 will not hold a building in place during 

 a hurricane. There were mounds of 

 concrete block, the remains of founda- 

 tion walls. Some of the larger commer- 

 cial buildings collapsed when the storm 

 surge rammed their load-bearing walls 

 broadside. 



In the mobile home parks, the story 

 was even grimmer. In one park, not a 

 single trailer remained on its founda- 

 tions. Even those that had been tied 

 down were kicked around like cans. 



What can North Carolina learn from 

 the tragedy at Mobile Bay? Rogers 

 and Machemehl say that even though 

 many of our newer buildings are better 

 than those lost at Mobile Bay, much of 

 the destruction would be repeated on 

 the North Carolina coast during a 

 similar storm. 



"The hardest thing was to get all 

 those houses up on pilings," Rogers 

 says. "Now that they're up there, 

 that's going to cut off most of the 

 problems. But we need to work with 

 the building inspectors and contractors 

 to see that the pilings are deep enough 

 and the fastening techniques are strong 

 enough." 



Toward that end, Rogers has put 

 together a slide show that he is 



presenting to groups of contractors, 

 building inspectors, civic leaders and 

 property owners. The slides include 

 many of the shots he took at Mobile 

 Bay, plus some examples of vulnerable 

 buildings on the North Carolina 

 beaches. (People interested in having 

 Rogers speak to their groups can con- 

 tact him at the Marine Advisory Ser- 

 vice office in the N. C. Marine 

 Resources Center/Ft. Fisher, 458- 

 5780). 



With other experts, Rogers also has 

 been working out ways to define an 

 "ocean erodible area" for the Coastal 

 Resources Commission, which issues 

 permits for beach development. The 

 ocean erodible area is the part of the 

 shoreline, nearest the beach, that is 

 likely to be eroded over 30 years (in- 

 cluding the erosion expected during 

 one 100-year storm). 



Rogers is also helping the state to es- 

 timate the amount of destruction that 

 might result if a severe hurricane were 

 to hit a segment of the state's coastline. 

 The investigators have chosen Surf 

 City as their model, and will consider 

 possible waves, tides and winds to 

 predict which buildings would be lost, 

 which would survive, and what the 

 damage would add up to in dollars and 

 cents. 



