A massive house that has perched more and more precariously over the edge of a Wellfleet bluff is gone, after demolition crews surprised the town by showing up with excavators on Monday.
Known locally as the “Blasch House,” after the original owners who had it built in 2010, the house and its predicament have long been the subject of controversy. In 2022, John Bonomi bought the house from the Blasch family for $5.5 million. Both owners had sought approval to build a seawall to protect the eroding bluff, but the town of Wellfleet rejected the proposals, citing existing state regulations and negative impacts such coastal armoring could have on the surrounding beach.
Bryan McCormack, a coastal processes specialist with Woods Hole Sea Grant and Cape Cod Cooperative Extension, wrote a report for Wellfleet last year that found the bluff had eroded by more than 50 feet in the last decade. The current erosion rate is 3.8 to 5.6 feet a year. Given that, he wrote, the house would likely tumble into Cape Cod Bay within three years if nothing was done. If that were to happen, thousands of pounds of debris – not only heavy wood and metal construction materials, but toxic chemicals from fiberglass, refrigerants, and other sources – could end up in Cape Cod Bay, and destroy nearby oyster beds.
On Monday, from the beach below the property, McCormack watched the 5,100 square-foot home get demolished.
“Seeing that this is happening, going into dumpsters and being taken off site, rather than next week in a storm, it is, I think, a preferable outcome for a lot of the people in the town and for the people that use the beach, the people that are eating shellfish out of Wellfleet Harbor, the people that are living all through this system,” he said.
Neighbors who watched the demolition work said the excavators began by ripping off the roof and second floor. By 11:30 a.m., all that remained was the first floor. As the excavators ripped up everything above the foundation, two men in hard-hats used rakes to collect pieces of wooden shingles and other small debris. But some debris tumbled down the bluff, along with loose sand. A 20-foot-long white pipe could be seen in the water when the tide went out. The owner, McCormack said, would be responsible for cleaning it all up.
Still, the vast majority of what was in the house – steel beams, siding, door frames, floor boards – was grabbed by the massive claws of the two excavators and placed in dumpsters.
Last week, according to Wellfleet police onsite for the demolition, a team with Habitat for Humanity went through the home, pulling out windows, cabinets, and more for reuse.
As Monday wore on, only one recognizable room of the house remained: a great room, featuring soaring wooden beams, white shiplap walls, and a ceiling fan turning in the breeze. Once that room was demolished, the outer wall of the home – the one that faced the ocean – was finally torn down around 2:00 pm.
Yarmouth resident Judy Bourassa said she was glad to see the house come down in a controlled way, rather than have a storm tumble it into Cape Cod Bay.
“Having hiked out here for the last ten years and watching it get close to the edge, it was getting worse and worse. And March is approaching. That's our worst time on Cape Cod,” she said. “So it’s a blessing to watch it come down this way.”
“It’s devastating to the homeowner,” said McCormack, the coastal processes specialist. But considering the nearby ecosystems and habitats that would be jeopardized if the house were allowed to fall into the Bay, he said, “Having it come down today is better than Mother Nature taking it in a week, in a month, in a year.”
