North Carolina
How did hundreds of tires wash up onto North Carolina’s shore?
HOLDEN BEACH, N.C. — Holden Beach Mayor J. Alan Holden says about 1,000 tires washed up onto its beaches after a two-day coastal storm churned in the Atlantic Ocean, our partners at The Charlotte Observer reported.
Video shows tires along the shore with some lodged in the sand while others swashed back and forth in the surf.
The tires most likely came from an artificial reef, which was meant to create fishing grounds.
But it didn’t work.
There were about 650,000 tires dumped off the coast between 1975 and 1983, N.C. State University reported.
The tires lasted but the chains and cables that anchored them to the ocean floor did not.
They have appeared on the coast since then, including 28,000 after Hurricane Bonnie in 1998, officials said.
“We are working to get these hazards off the strand,” Holden Beach officials wrote in a Dec. 18 Facebook post. “However, it may take a week or more to remove what’s there already with more possibly showing up over the course of the next several days.”
The state is leading the removal effort, officials said.
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