T6. Th1 31st, 2025
On the Alabama Coast, the Unluckiest Island in America

On the night of September 12, 1979, a bruising Class 3 hurricane named Frederic roared up the Gulf of Mexico and all through Alabama’s Dauphin Island sooner than surging into Mobile Bay. The 120-mile-per-hour winds and 12-foot storm surge toppled the one bridge to the island and destroyed 140 houses. For numerous years, the one method for workers to commute to shut by Mobile was by ferry.

Journey guides from the interval described Dauphin Island as considered one of many Gulf’s hidden gems, a quaint, unpretentious oasis of pastel bungalows, white sugar-sand seashores, and spectacular sunsets. They didn’t level out hurricanes or the reality that the 14-mile island was slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.

Dauphin is shaped like a drumstick – widest on its east end, the place there is a lush maritime forest, a historic Civil Battle–interval fort, and a nationally celebrated hen sanctuary; and pinched on its west end, the place it has misplaced over 100 toes of shoreline to erosion and storms in the previous few a very long time, and journey houses now perch like birdhouses above the water. It is thought of considered one of a ranking of low-lying islands, some no more than sand spits, which dangle like a necklace alongside the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Louisiana. As quickly as a formidable barrier between the Gulf and the mainland, the islands are literally tattered and uneven, some dense with sedge and bushes, others ripped asunder by storms and all nonetheless vanished beneath the water.

Frederic wasn’t the first hurricane to pummel the Alabama resort, nor wouldn’t it not be the ultimate. For as long as anyone has saved information, Dauphin Island has been a magnet for violent storms. Throughout the early 1900s, 5 extremely efficient hurricanes lashed the then largely empty barrier. Additional not too way back, a dozen hurricanes and tropical storms have battered the resort, along with Camille in 1969, Frederic in 1979, Georges in 1998, Ivan in 2004, and Katrina in 2005. In 2017, Nate, a weak storm with 65-mile-per-hour winds, pushed numerous toes of water into dozens of homes.

The costliest homes are on the island’s prone west end, the place Katrina gutted a complete lot of houses, sweeping some off 15-foot-high stilts.

“Dauphin is kind of a bowling alley,” talked about Hank Caddell, an environmental authorized skilled in Mobile. “It retains getting hit with all of this heedless destruction.”

It isn’t laborious to see why. The razor-thin a part of coast the place Dauphin Island lies is a veritable runway for late-season hurricanes sprinting up the Gulf of Mexico. The island is a complicated geometry, bordered on the east end by the busy Mobile Bay Ship Channel, with towering sand dunes throughout the middle and almost no shoreline or dunes on the pancake flat west end.

It could seem beautiful, then, that an important and costliest homes are located alongside the prone west end, the place Katrina gutted a complete lot of journey homes, sweeping some off their 15-foot-high stilts into the Mississippi Sound. However that’s the place householders and patrons want to assemble. “It’s flat and has the proper views,” talked about Mayor Jeff Collier.

On the Alabama Coast, the Unluckiest Island in America

Map of Dauphin Island, Alabama.
Courtesy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Beneath Alabama regulation, there’s little Collier can do, assuming he even wanted to stop them. The state has no requirements for setbacks. Property householders can — and do — assemble correct to the water’s edge. In idea, there is a state constructing line limiting establishing previous it. Nonetheless, the street was adopted in 1973 and now sits a few hundred yards offshore, beneath the Gulf of Mexico.

“The state has in no way gone once more and reset the street to keep in mind erosion, storms, or sea-level rise,” talked about George F. Crozier, the earlier head of a marine evaluation center on the east end. “It’s kind of a joke. It fell into the water.”

“We’ve had a run of unhealthy luck,” Collier allowed. “We’ve had a run like yearly with a hurricane. The west end may be very prone. It washes over in every storm. Like I say, the west end goes beneath in a heavy dew.”

Dauphin is also notably prone to storms and rising water, nonetheless it is hardly alone. Federal information current that damage from hurricanes is rising dramatically, topping virtually $750 billion {{dollars}} throughout the remaining 20 years, or about two-thirds of all U.S. hurricane damage throughout the remaining century. That’s extra of earthquakes, tornadoes, and wildfires blended, with three catastrophic hurricanes in 2017 – Harvey, Maria, and Irma – alone resulting in $300 billion in damage.

Now, with the planet warming, sea ranges rising, and oceans heating up, providing further gasoline, hurricanes are liable to develop even greater and further dangerous in the end, says Kerry Emanuel, considered one of many principal atmospheric scientists and hurricane consultants, based at MIT. By the next century, a Class 5 hurricane – akin to Dorian, which devastated the Bahamas this week – would possibly go from being a one-in-800-year storm to a one-in-80-year storm. Unsurprisingly, bigger hurricanes set off further damage, and with further property than ever lining the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the prospect of future epochal storms is simply inclined to reinforce.

Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed 450 of the 500 houses on the west end of Dauphin Island in 2005.

Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed 450 of the 5 hundred houses on the west end of Dauphin Island in 2005.
NOAA/NWS

Plenty of that damage will seemingly be alongside the carefully developed nonetheless low-lying barrier islands of Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, the place tons of of hundreds of second homes, funding properties and seashore houses crowd the coast. Nonetheless even Mid-Atlantic states are in peril, as Hurricane Sandy confirmed in 2012, with $72 billion in damage. The Gulf states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas are notably prone on account of their shallow profiles, heavy expenses of abrasion, and lack of sand dunes and totally different pure defenses.


On Dauphin Island, plenty of the earnings comes from the 5 hundred or so houses on the two-mile-long west end, virtually all of which can be rental properties and journey homes owned by absentee landlords. Some lease for as a lot as $5,000 per week. Critically, the householders pay a selected fee to town. “With out these funds, Dauphin Island could possibly be broke,” Mayor Collier suggested me. “Our funds is nearly three million {{dollars}}, and we wish every penny we get.”

Following each big storm, Collier and Dauphin Island homeowners observe a well-recognized script. First, they plead for disaster help from the federal authorities. Then they file claims with the federal flood insurance coverage protection program. Lastly, with tax {{dollars}} and insurance coverage protection payouts in hand, they rebuild within the similar dangerous location, assuming it isn’t underwater. That’s what occurred after Frederic, and after Georges, Ivan, and Katrina, and is now happening as soon as extra after Nate.

Dauphin has obtained as a minimum $100 million in federal help, which works out to $170,000 for each of the island’s 1,200 residents.

It is unclear how so much federal help Dauphin Island has obtained over time. The info are incomplete and don’t return far enough. Nonetheless it is as a minimum $100 million and some put the decide as extreme as $200 million. Crozier suggested me it could very properly be higher however. Nonetheless even the lower estimate works out to about $170,000 for each of the island’s 1,200 year-round residents.

“Dauphin Island, and notably the west end, is a poster infant for all of our failed public insurance coverage insurance policies, native, state, and federal,” Crozier talked about. “Really, it is a case look at of schizophrenia. The property householders want to be left alone, moreover when there is a storm. Then they want the taxpayers to pay for model new roads and bridges and sand and [to] help them rebuild.”


Paradoxically, Hurricane Frederic, which struck Dauphin in 1979, couldn’t have made landfall at a further useful time for residents of the resort. 4 months earlier, President Jimmy Carter shifted plenty of the nation’s disaster-response capabilities proper right into a newly created division, the Federal Emergency Administration Firm. With widespread damage alongside the central Gulf Coast, Hurricane Frederic supplied FEMA’s first examine.

Two days after the September storm, Carter flew over the coast to see the damage firsthand and to reassure Alabamans that the federal authorities had their backs. It was part of a standing customized amongst presidents. Consistent with press releases, on the time of his go to he promised to revive Dauphin Island and the rest of the Gulf Coast. FEMA put apart $200 million for Alabama’s restoration. 1000’s and hundreds went to Dauphin Island to revive roads, cart away particles, and help year-round homeowners pay funds whereas they rebuilt their homes.

An island resident sits on the site of her former oceanfront home, which was destroyed by Hurricane Elena in 1985.

An island resident sits on the situation of her former oceanfront dwelling, which was destroyed by Hurricane Elena in 1985.
Bettmann/Getty Photographs

The Frederic help bundle included $33 million to rebuild Dauphin Island’s solely bridge. After the storm, islanders had been pressured to utilize a ferry to get to and from their mainland jobs, together with hours to their workdays. Native politicians decided to assemble a model new elevated concrete span to the mainland. Federal taxpayers picked up 100% of the related price, which finally swelled to $40 million.

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The Carter presidential archives embody correspondence suggesting the president’s aides fearful {{that a}} new bridge would encourage a wave of enchancment on the prone barrier island, leaving far more homes uncovered to future hurricanes. Nonetheless, they issued the check, and the model new bridge opened in 1982. That exact same yr, the Reagan administration awarded Dauphin Island a $9 million grant for a sewer plant to serve the west end, the place rising numbers of journey homes had been being constructed.


In September 1998, Georges, a Class 2 hurricane, swept 41 bungalows from their concrete pads alongside the Gulf of Mexico and hurled them into houses near the Mississippi Sound. I was in Mobile on the time and drove over to see the damage. Whereas there, I encountered Gail Leacy taking pictures of her damaged dwelling on the sound facet on the west end.

“It merely flew at us,” she talked about, pointing to the crumpled roof of a bungalow sandwiched beneath her elevated house. Leacy and her husband, John, a builder, lived in Mobile nonetheless visited their Dauphin Island dwelling ceaselessly. Fortuitously, she talked about, they’d federal flood insurance coverage protection and can be succesful to recoup a couple of of their loss.

When FEMA agreed to pay for a quick sand dune, environmentalists protested it would solely encourage householders to rebuild in damage’s method.

Dauphin Island obtained over $2 million in federal disaster help, along with $1,125 to change town’s welcome sign, which reads, “The Sunset Capital of Alabama.” FEMA moreover agreed to pay for a quick sand dune to protect the remaining seashore houses alongside the sand-starved west end. Environmental groups protested that the dune would encourage householders to rebuild in damage’s method. Nonetheless, FEMA paid over $1 million for a five-foot wall of sand designed to remaining 5 years.

The non everlasting dune washed away in decrease than two years. FEMA officers then wrote a second check for $4 million for yet another non everlasting dune. It, too, washed away.

After Hurricane Georges, many property householders on the west end elevated their houses on pilings. The hope was that surge from future storms would transfer harmlessly beneath their homes. Many had been raised 10 to fifteen toes throughout the air.

It was an excellent suggestion as such ideas go. Nonetheless then Hurricane Katrina pushed a 19-foot wall of water all through the west end in 2005, destroying or damaging 450 of the 5 hundred houses there. It was staggering to see. Whole rows of journey homes had been swept from their lofty perches and pitched into the Mississippi Sound. All that remained had been empty pilings, particles, and the effluvial stench of rotting seaweed.

Katrina twisted and undermined the pilings of the Leacys’ dwelling. “We’re nonetheless standing, nonetheless we’re pretty severely damaged,” John suggested me on the time. He was getting ready to file one different declare with the federal flood insurance coverage protection program, though he confused the payout wouldn’t cowl his losses. As soon as I requested what variety of claims he had filed over time, John talked about, “To be honest, they most likely misplaced money on me.”

Construction workers rebuild a house destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Growth workers rebuild a house destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
AP Image/Rob Carr

He wasn’t alone. The flood program has misplaced a bundle insuring Dauphin Island property. After Katrina, payouts surged virtually fourfold, from about $15 million in 2005 to over $75 million in 2017, information current. Remarkably, 100 houses accounted for over half the losses. One proprietor has filed a dozen claims and obtained over $300,000, double the price of his house, in response to information supplied by the Nationwide Sources Safety Council. One different filed 10 claims for almost $400,000. His house was worth $180,000.

Brad Cox misplaced 37 of the 90 rental properties his agency, Boardwalk Realty, managed on the time. “Properly, thirty-eight once you embody the one which burned,” he elaborated. Cox was standing subsequent to his crumpled office days after Katrina after I found him. His cell phone was already ringing with householders inquiring what it would take to rebuild. Dwelling values dropped for a time after the storm. Nonetheless then householders began establishing bigger, further lavish seashore houses alongside the west end, “some with six bedrooms,” Brad talked about, marveling at their measurement. An space newspaper launched that Dauphin Island was once more.

In regards to the similar time, the Western Carolina Faculty geologist Rob Youthful was testifying on Capitol Hill about coastal disasters. “I can let you already know with near certainty that we’ll be rebuilding the west end of Dauphin Island as soon as extra in the end throughout the subsequent 10 years. Most likely sooner, fairly than later.”

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In October 2017, I met George Crozier throughout the parking lot of his outdated employer, the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, a nonprofit educational and evaluation institute on the east end. The plan was for Crozier to steer me on a tour. Nonetheless per week earlier, Hurricane Nate, a Class 1 storm, had washed over the island and the west end was nonetheless flooded.

The real estate website Zillow still assigns property values to parcels of land on the west end of Dauphin Island that are now underwater.

The precise property web page Zillow nonetheless assigns property values to parcels of land on the west end of Dauphin Island which can be truly underwater.
Zillow

We centered on the rest of the island, which incorporates a forest of towering pine bushes, an 126-acre Audubon Chook Sanctuary, and, surprisingly, an 18-hole golf course, the place Jeff Collier served as a result of the golf skilled until not too way back.

For years, the east end had been rising. Nonetheless nowadays it had begun dropping sand. Locals blamed the shut by Mobile Ship Channel, which they contend is disrupting the circulation of sand alongside the island, robbing sand from the east end and depositing it within the midst of the island, the place massive dunes are migrating landward and threatening to bury numerous houses on the in every other case sand-starved island. For causes no person can pretty make clear, the sand migrating alongside the island abruptly stops near a metropolis pier proper right here. The seashores beneath that point, along with the carefully developed west end, have misplaced sand and are vanishing.

The loss has been dramatic – about 100 toes of shoreline over three a very long time. Dozens of pilings that when held houses are literally buried beneath the water. Quite a bit to the chagrin of environmentalists, Alabama coastal regulators have allowed property householders to erect seawalls and bulkheads spherical their sinking properties, which the environmentalists say exacerbates the sand loss.

Following each storm, Mayor Collier sends out vans and bulldozers to assemble the sand that washes onto the west-end roads and place it once more on the shore. “We try to put the seashore once more on the seashore,” he talked about. Widening the seashore further significantly would value about $60 million, money Collier says town would not have.

Dauphin obtained $7 million to widen newly eroding seashores. Nonetheless the patch didn’t remaining prolonged, as Hurricane Nate swallowed 20 % of the sand.

Numerous years once more, Dauphin Island obtained $7 million from the Deepwater Horizon settlement fund to widen the newly eroding seashores in entrance of Fort Gaines and the Sea Lab. The locals had been notably happy with their new, wider seashore, and town even obtained an award as considered one of many nation’s “Biggest Restored Seashores.” Nonetheless the patch didn’t remaining prolonged. Hurricane Nate swallowed 20 % of the sand, and now Collier hopes FEMA will reimburse town for the 35 truckloads of sand it plans to cart over from the mainland.

“We’ve got now many challenges,” Collier talked about. “Nonetheless choices are few and by no means low price.”

At 56 years outdated, Collier is tall and lean, with skinny blond hair and a golfer’s tan. He grew up on the island and has been its mayor for over 20 years. He talked about he has “gone to a complete lot of conferences and written a complete lot of letters” in an attempt to search out an answer to the island’s erosion downside. “Nonetheless on the end of the day, it is irritating that we nonetheless don’t have a solution. It’s almost like we’re expendable.”

Mayor Jeff Collier talks with local news reporters ahead of Hurricane Nate in 2017.

Mayor Jeff Collier talks with native data reporters ahead of Hurricane Nate in 2017.
Associates of Dauphin Island

Probably it was time to ponder abandoning the unlucky barrier island and switch to higher ground? I really useful.

Collier shortly rejected the idea. “The analogy I reap the benefits of, it is like dropping an arm or a leg. Can we hand over and die, or uncover one different method to take care of going? I check out the island the similar method. I am a fighter. I don’t hand over.”

After Katrina, a few dozen homeowners had been in a position to promote their homes to FEMA and depart the home vacant. Dauphin Island officers even helped with the paperwork.

“I was assured it was going to work,” Collier talked about. “We lastly had of us coming to the desk waving the white flag.”

Nonetheless the mayor didn’t hear one thing for two years. “On the end of the day, we purchased notification they weren’t going to fund us,” he talked about. “They didn’t say why, moreover they didn’t have the money. I was disillusioned and shocked. My take was that they figured these houses could possibly be beneath six toes of water, so why trouble?”

Tailor-made from Geography of Hazard: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Worth of America’s Coasts by Gilbert M. Gaul. Printed by Sarah Crichton Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 3rd 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Gilbert M. Gaul. All rights reserved.

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