are willing to contribute the cost of raising structures and filling in land below those. help me to understand how you literally take a town and raise it by 11 feet. do you build up the ground upon which it stands? is that what you re doing? the first step is independent of this project completely. it s dictated by fema requirements. 1200 have been damaged as a result of sandy. as a result they re required to lift those homes up out of the floodplain. are we talking stilts like concrete pilings or something? initially the thought was that would be the case but fema has backed off the velocity zone and most of highlands is in the
is north carolina ready? reporter: they re ready this is not the first time at the rodeo for these guys on the outer banks. they ve dealt with present yit of storms. this could be the biggest impact since isabel eight years ago. it s taken over the whole beach. this was just refurbished it s nice and wide about a football field why wide. it s all under water. a lot of the sand has been carried out by the high tide. as the tide tries to go out, the wind is going to push it back in. we re getting gusts up to 50 miles per hour. here s the pier down the coast. the atlantic beach pier they ve lost part of that. that s a wooden structure. this the janet s pier, these are concrete pilings. they built this to withstand a category three hurricane. they re confident. i think they re going to be okay. ynt show you right now because of the wind and the light. i m looking at the roofs over
outside of his home because of a falling tree branch. of course, that s the kind of thing that can reek so much havoc and in a tremendous tragedy in north carolina, begin killed by a tree branch falling on him outside of his home. it s of grave concern of those homes beautifully surrounded with the landscaping by the trees. in a situation like this, doentd get anywhere near them. when you have winds of 70-mile-per-hour plus in that area, and, of course, north carolina has had landfall three hours ago of hurricane irene, this is a precarious situation at best. paramedics say a man in north carolina killed outside his home by a tree branch that went down. here s a look at nags head north carolina where you see some of these homes as you can see are built on stilts in order to withstand the flooding, but it doesn t look like some of the these homes have any kind of constitutional righty foundation regardless of how those concrete pilings down into the sand and
may be a little bit windier than on the ground. the entire beach is under water and the tide is high. it s up to the dune lin. another 20 minutes we ll have a better idea of what s going on on the beach. that was the pier that was taken out by hurricane isabel in 2003. they just got it open in may. built to withstand a category three. we re fairly confident that this is not going to to this time around. it s a very solid looking pier with concrete pilings. look at the ocean out here. we can see farther out. as far as you can see it s just white, frothy. it looks like we lost mike s shot there. mike, are you with us? reporter: we have the rain fade. the winds are picking up there. we re going to go ahead and try to get his shot back in. the meantime, an insurance
little, too late? jonathan serrie is live on orange beach, alabama. what do you the idea? do you like it? reporter: good morning, bill, behind me, is a $4.5 million project, look at the construction there, on the other side of the bridge, they are driving pilings, concrete pilings into the bottom of perdido pass, the inlet i m standing on now and they ll eventually suspend a 32 inch diameter pipe all the way across perdido path and will be filled with foam so it floats and will be suspended from chains from the pilings you see them driving into the water and into the bottom of the path and then, in addition, to the 32 inches in diameter of the pipe, it will have flaps on it, extending 18 inches above and 18 inches below the idea being that it will offer much more protection than traditional boom, this