Oceanside dune gets temporary fix

Flooding is part of life for Clark Evans of Old Inlet Bait and Tackle on Route 1.

That's why when the Evans family rebuilt their shop south of Dewey Beach in 1984, they wired the electric from above and installed concrete floors. It marked their third building; the first was swept away from its ocean-front location during the Ash Wednesday storm of '62.

“We've been here for 55 years,” he said. “We'd like to be here another 55.”

Evans was at the shop – now on the flood-prone bay side of Route 1 – when storm surge from Hurricane Jose hit the Delmarva coast.

Still hundreds of miles off the coast Sept. 19, the Category 1 Hurricane Jose sent strong waves slamming the coast. Combined with a morning high tide, sea water overwhelmed the oceanside dune near Conquest Road in Delaware Seashore State Park, opening a wide breach.

The breach forced the closure of Route 1 from Dewey Beach to Bethany Beach for about three hours.

“We're so used to it happening,” Evans said. “So we stayed here and stayed busy. It killed business. And then our phone rang off the hook.”

While Evans found things to do around the shop, crews with the Delaware Department of Transportation and Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control mobilized to fix the breach.

They found firm ground for bulldozers and pushed sand to create two ridges between the ocean and breached dune, cutting off water flow.

“It was a strange and quirky situation right there at Conquest,” said Tony Pratt, administrator of DNREC's Shoreline and Waterway Management Section. “If you stay on the job long enough you learn something new. In 35 years I've never seen this happen before.”

The dune breached this week was a few feet lower than the ideal 16-foot dune, Pratt said.

The strong waves produced by the offshore storm created a deep, wide tide pool on the beach in front of the dune, and water eventually found the perfect vulnerable spot to wash over the dune.

“The water level found a low spot in the dune we weren't aware of,” Pratt said. “It might have been a channel cut in Hurricane Sandy.”

As the morning high tide receded Sept. 19, so did the floodwaters. The Delaware Department of Transportation reopened Route 1 shortly after noon, after the breach was fixed.

The temporary fix of the dune held up against the following high tide, Pratt said, and he and his staff will continue reinforcing the area with sand until they are able to plant dune grasses to further stabilize the dune. Two or three other vulnerable spots nearby also are being stabilized with available sand, he said.

“It was really a fluke,” he said. “We didn't really have problems from the seaside anywhere else.”

However, he said, only one breach is a testament to the beach engineering and sand-pumping efforts.

“It was not uncommon in the 1980s to have 10 or 12 breaks in the dunes between the inlet and Dewey,” he said. The breach, he said, showed a storm does not have to hit Delaware directly to create problems along the coast.

Dunes, wetlands are first line of defense

Evans said he worries overdevelopment, especially on the western edges of the Inland Bays, is encroaching on nearby wetlands, which act as sponges for floodwaters.

“They're the natural sponge and the natural barrier between us and the water,” he said. “It's got nowhere to go because of all the development, so it comes upland.”

The last time Evans recalled flooding from the oceanside was from Superstorm Sandy in 2012. That year, the tackle shop filled with 22 inches of water and four inches of mud. But they swept it up and reopened because flooding at the family store is a part of life, Evans said.

“We're built to flood,” he said. “It's all about awareness and preparedness. That's really what it comes down to.”

Route 1 flooding was minor compared to the possible devastation had Hurricane Jose made a direct hit on the East Coast, Pratt said.

“We would have had more widespread problems, for sure,” he said. “We protect as best we can, but we're never going to be foolproof against coastal storms.”

Down south, Hurricanes Irma and Maria have wreaked havoc on Florida and the Caribbean, where small islands are now covered in debris and may be without power for months. Pratt said officials are keeping a close eye on Maria's northeastward track.

Meanwhile in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, where Evans and his family have vacationed for several years, a long recovery is ahead.

“It's going to take them forever to rebuild,” Evans said. “The house I stay in survived. The house next to it is obliterated. The strength of wind-driven water is nothing to be messed with. Until you see it firsthand, you don't respect what it can do.”