BUXTON, N.C. (WAVY) — Piles of debris as far as the eyes can see line Old Lighthouse Road in Buxton. The debris is from the nine houses that were destroyed by the waves that scattered along the shores of the oceanfront.
“So sad, yeah, very sad,” said Jane Hetzel, who along with her husband Paul have been coming here from Massachusetts for more than 50 years. “It just it makes me cry, … very upsetting.”
“[It’s] more than losing a house,” Paul Hetzel said. “They lost all the memories that went with it.”
Back on Sept. 30, five houses here in Buxton went into the water in one day, and four more would follow. The shoreline has been covered with the contents and remains of the houses that fell.
Carroll Midgett with OBX Lawn and Tractor Service has been cleaning up in Buxton since the first house fell.
“I thought I would see … a few fall in my lifetime, but not that many at one time,” Midgett said. “In that short time span, that was really heartbreaking for me, because I know a lot of the homeowners.”
Midgett was hired by a few the owners whose houses were destroyed. He, along with his crew, have been doing some heavy lifting to move all the debris from the beaches and between the homes to the road where contractors hired by Dare County are collecting the debris.
“The house that fell when we moved Sunday was almost 20 tandem loads that we moved out,” Midgett said. “And then yesterday was probably two [loads] handpicking, going up the streets, trying to clean the streets for the neighbors.”
Midgett is one of the few remaining contractors trying to remove what remains before the county stops the collections. According to the Dare County, this will be the final debris collection conducted by contractors.
