Thursday, November 3, 2016

Rebuilding the Beach

Pawleys Island is still cleaning up after Hurricane Matthew, a month later. The south end of the island, where the parking lot for the beach is located, was hit the hardest and is still completely closed off. The boardwalks, the dunes, the beach, and the parking lot were wiped out and will have to be completely rebuilt.

On the north end, however, repairs are under way. You still can't use the beach but you can see what is being done to repair it.

There was a lot more beach here before Matthew came along. There were dunes also, but the water swept them away and piled the sand under the houses and right across the road. Huge machinery has been brought in to reclaim ton after ton of the sand from under the homes and road, load it into trucks and bring it back to where it belongs.

The dunes used to run along under the highest point of the stairways and the beach extended much farther out into the sea. All the stairs were damaged and have had to be replaced on many of the homes.

 

 

 

There are several of these giant lights along the beach, allowing the equipment to work night and day.

 

 

 

 

 

Someday it should look like this again. I wonder how long it will take.

 

 

 

There is a good reason for this sign:

"No Lifeguard on Duty Swim at Your Own Risk"


The pool is filled to the top with sand! A large, expensive sandbox!

 

11 comments:

  1. Hope everything will be normal again very quick.

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  2. The beachfront needs trees to keep the sand etc from eroding, rock walls would assist also.
    Get some Norfolk pines - imported seedlings if you don't have them growing in the USA.
    They will VERY much assist in keeping the beaches (sand) in place.
    Colin

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  3. Matthew certainly caused a lot of damage. I'm surprised they reclaim the sand and put it back on the beach.

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  4. Reading your posts ha made the power and devastation of Matthew much more tangible.

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  5. So much more damage that I realised. Will they be putting anything in place to retain the sand during future hurricanes?

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  6. Lots of work, patience and time to repair the damage that was done.
    Will look nice when finished and grown back with dunes, hopefully.

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  7. The aftermath of such a storm takes a long time I see. But they are very busy to repair things.

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  8. What a lot of destruction, Cynthia! I live near the Gold Coast here in Queensland, and repairing and restoring beaches after cyclones take up a huge budget.

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  9. I wonder what happened years ago...did they just let the sand be? I enjoyed seeing the photos:)

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  10. I don't see how they keep rebuilding beaches. It just doesn't seem possible. Matthew did a lot of damage!

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  11. The force of Mother Nature defies belief. Be safe!

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