Community in shock amid Broadkill Beach access point erosion

BROADKILL BEACH, Del. – In Delaware, a beach community is stunned by what their coastline looks like. Residents near broadkill beach can’t believe just how bad the beach has eroded.

“It’s crazy I’ve never seen nothing like this before.”

From residents to visitors, no one can believe what they’re seeing.

“We come here pretty much every year and this is just amazing. The beach is gone and it’s going to take a long time to rebuild,” says beach visitor, Jim Burns.

“They just finished this and now it’s gone. It’s just amazing, it’s just incredible, just from rain it wasn’t that big of a storm,” says another beachgoer.

Broadkill Beach struggling to withstand the recent wind and heavy rain. Many access points completely washed away. What makes matters worse is that just about two years ago there was a complete rehabilitation project done to help the beach withstand erosion on this same dune.

“They really had it looking beautiful and now we’re back to this, it’s square one again,” says Tom Rigney, a frequent beachgoer.

But Broadkill Beach Preservation Association President Jim Bailey says without this dune, it could have been a lot worse.

“If you take a look at it and you have to weigh things. That kind of erosion had you transferred that erosion to the old beachfront, we would have experienced severe property damage,” explains Bailey.

The question that keeps coming up is what happens these next couple days with the expected rain. Bailey says they’ll just have to wait and see what happens and just cope with it. But the good news is that the dune is working, it’s protecting the beachfront properties.

For the time being, he asks for people to stay away from the heavily eroded access points in the center of the community and walk a ways down to other points that have better access.