Historic seaside homes being demolished

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (WPRI) -- Thirty days have passed since Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast. Some residents and business owners are continuing to pick up the pieces and rebuild, while others are breaking it all down to start from scratch.

There is still a lot of cleaning up to be done in South Kingstown, including historic Browning's Beach, where three homes are set to be demolished.

The massive Victorian beach homes have stood more than 100 years, and soon, two of them will be demolished.

"They've been undermined by the recent superstorm, and the property owners have made the decision that they are not salvageable," said South Kingstown Director of Planning Vincent Murray.

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One of the homes was taken down on Wednesday, and now there are demolition permits for the other two. All three are on the National Register of Historic Places and have made it through many storms before, including the Hurricane of 1938.

Unfortunately, they could not withstand Sandy's strength.

"The erosion has been a continual onslaught over a period of time and just made, apparently, some continuance of some of the properties unattainable," said Murray.

Though privately owned, the loss of the historic homes is felt by the entire town.

"Kind of a landmark group of structures that people in the area would recognize over a long period of time as being always there," added Murray. "It's a little sad for the community, I think."

Town officials tell us that they recently met with FEMA, and will soon have the final numbers on exactly how much all of the clean-up throughout the town will cost.