A controversial house at Kammies Beach on Oʻahu’s North Shore was demolished late last week after its lanai cracked and fell onto the sand below.
Homeowner Joshua VanEmmerik, who maintained the house primarily as a short-term rental, had drawn the ire of some local community members and conservationists for his attempts to harden the shoreline in front of his property near Sunset Beach.
The state had fined VanEmmerik $77,000 and ordered him to remove any unauthorized control measures by Sept. 1. The state also informed him almost a year ago that the house on his property off Ke Nui Road was at “risk of failure” due to coastal erosion. They advised him to relocate the structure out of harm’s way.
VanEmmerik did not respond to HPR's request to speak for this story, and it’s unclear if and how he tried to heed the state’s warning.
Last Tuesday, the makai side of VanEmmerik’s house collapsed, sending broken glass and pieces of wood and metal down to the beach below. By the end of the week, a team of contractors had knocked down the house.
Although the house is gone, climate scientist Chip Fletcher said the saga at Ke Nui Road is far from over.
“We are at the very beginning of a multi-generational period of coastal pain,” Fletcher said.
Sea level rise driven by climate change is allowing waves to come higher and higher up the shore, endangering coastal communities, according to Fletcher, the interim dean for the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at UH Mānoa.
“This is happening around the world, and our modeling suggests that by mid-century, 25 years from now, we're looking at 1,800 separate parcels just on this island of Oʻahu that will fall into the erosion zone,” he said.
In late August, a pavilion at Kapuka’ulua Beach on Maui collapsed after being destabilized by erosion. In 2022, another home slid onto the beach just a few doors down from VanEmmerik’s residence.
“If we keep treating this problem as a series of singular events, we're not going to make it,” Fletcher said.
This year, the state Legislature earmarked $1 million for the creation of a beach management plan for the North Shore. Denise Antolini, a retired law professor and North Shore resident, worked to get the bill passed and called it a rare instance of consensus among state officials, conservationists, and homeowners.
“Many of the homeowners, some of them that are currently under an enforcement action, actually supported that legislation, because we need to find some solutions,” Antolini said
Antolini expects that the plan will be completed in a year and a half and hopefully chart a path forward that other Hawaiʻi beach communities can follow. She noted that state officials seem motivated to avoid another crisis like the collapse of VanEmmerik’s house.
“This situation on the North Shore at Kammies has lit a fire under the state and county agencies,” she said.
Antolini attended an emergency interagency meeting called by Rep. Sean Quinlan the day after the collapse. She also commended Department of Planning and Permitting Director Dawn Apuna for quickly providing emergency authorization for contractors to remove VanEmmerik’s residence.
“It was really refreshing to see the beginnings of state and county cooperation,” Antolini said. “These kinds of disasters, unfortunately, are also what we need to spur government cooperation and action while we're working on the policy changes going forward.”
