PARK TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Crews in Ottawa County demolished a home before Mother Nature could fully take it down.
Until Friday afternoon, a home on Lakeshore Drive in Park Township was teetering on the edge of a cliff.
Officials say it was only a matter of time before the home was taken down by severe erosion.
It took about an hour for contractors to fully demolish it .
Park Twp. home teeters on edge of cliff before it was demolished.
It's the responsibility of the property owner to take care of it. Local officials worked with the homeowner to make sure it was taken down safely, before it ended up in Lake Michigan.
"The excavation on dry land is a lot cheaper than an excavation from the barge down below. That is one area of it, but the other is you don’t want debris and contamination into Lake Michigan. It is a protected body of water that we are trying to watch out for and we don’t want the structure in that body of water," Ottawa County Emergency Management Director Nick Bonstell said.
The home turned into a pile of rubble is symbolic of the devastating effects of near-record high lake levels that have battered the lakeshore in recent time.
"What you are really seeing along the lakeshore all the way from the border of Michigan is historic erosion and it's happening at a rate much faster than everyone predicted it's going to happen," Bonstell said.
Because of severe erosion, the unfortunate reality is we could see more of these controlled demolitions in the near future.
Crews demolish home on 11/22
