Two storms in one week took a toll on Cape Cod beaches.
"There were three of four cycles of pushing the tide in and just taking chunks of beach away," said John Defoe, roads and trails supervisor of Cape Cod National Seashore.
In Provincetown at Herring Cove Beach, erosion further crumbled a parking lot.
"It's heartbreaking to see, when you pull up to check on the stairs and they're gone," said Defoe.
Some stairs to Marconi Beach in Wellfleet were destroyed. The cost to replace them could be as much as $175,000.
"The massive amount of erosion that's happening out here, it's really kind of discouraging," said Janet Golan of Eastham.
"We have seen the stairs go away like every year for the last couple of years," said Mike Golan of Eastham.
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Beaches along the Cape typically lose two to three feet a year in erosion, but at Nauset Light, it's 12 to 15 feet a year.
"What seems to be happening is that there is no offshore sandbar, so the waves break directly on the beach instead of a sandbar,” said Karst Hoogeboom, chief of facilities and maintenance of Cape Cod National Seashore.
The stairs are off limits again now. The Park Service Hopes to repair them. But for now, the bluffs here are very unstable.
