NORTH TOPSAIL BEACH, N.C. -- On their first and last weekend at their new North Carolina beach house, the Madonna girls picked out pink and green paint for their room, slept in bunk beds and learned how to catch skittering crabs in the moonlight.
After they returned home to Syracuse, N.Y., Hurricane Ophelia washed away 60 feet of beach. And when Giuliana, 11, and Marisa, 7, learned that the duplex was suddenly teetering on stilts as the ocean surged beneath it, they cried.
A month after achieving their dream of a vacation house _ buying a fixer-upper home on the ocean _ the Madonna family faced a real estate purgatory. Their house, and seven others that line the ocean at Topsail Island's north end, was condemned in October by the town of North Topsail Beach.
The condemnation has forced the property owners to choose among equally untenable solutions. They're learning that as the government did little to protect them from buying houses on unstable ground, it can do little now to protect their investments from the ominous creep of the Atlantic Ocean.
For seven days in September, Ophelia gnawed at Topsail Island's beaches. At the island's northern point, 60 feet of beach disappeared. The beach itself sank eight feet. At high tide recently, water surrounded most homes.
The town has given the property owners until Dec. 12 to decide: make the houses livable, move them to new lots elsewhere or tear them down entirely.
_ The power company won't let property owners truck their houses under low-hanging power lines, because that would cut off electricity to part of the island.
_ Insurance companies won't write off the houses as total losses because the houses themselves aren't in terrible shape. So homeowners are stuck with their mortgages.
Sixteen years ago, Semmler was a Marine stationed at nearby Camp Lejeune, and the house had 200 yards of sand between it and the ocean. He thought the home was a good investment.
The Madonnas, who own an Italian bakery in Syracuse, plunged their life savings into the second home. They bought it this year after Elizabeth Madonna had been looking for houses on the Internet. It needed work, but they could just afford the $172,000.
The couple had never vacationed in North Carolina before looking at the house, she said. They didn't know about barrier islands or their shifting geology.
They didn't know that many of the houses, including theirs, had been condemned after previous storms. In past years, property owners agreed to reinforce the stilts, called pilings, to keep the houses aloft. They buried giant sandbags in front of their houses.
At North Topsail Beach Town Hall, there are thick files about the houses, but nothing requires sellers to disclose the houses' histories. All but two of the 16 homes changed hands in the past five years, according to property tax records in Onslow County. The Madonnas were told about North Topsail Beach's plans to renourish the beach, that new sand might arrive in 2007, Madonna said.
The sale was completed at the end of August. The Madonnas then packed up their girls and their 1-year-old son, Michael Jr. They drove 15 hours to spend Labor Day weekend in North Carolina.
The meeting got raucous. Town building inspector Gene Casey tried to explain why he condemned the houses. People questioned his credentials. Someone called him "the Gestapo." The next day, he was maligned on a local radio station.
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