EDITORIAL: Our sand shame: As piece of Destin drowns, we all fall

We seem to have become a magnet for overblown storms.

After three tropical tempests eroded beaches in 2008, we have endured two near-direct hits from tropical storms this year that barely mustered a bluster.

And yet what should be considered a blessing is instead a curse as the scene plays out again: Scenes of Destin destruction in storms that left most of the Emerald Coast unscathed.

Our misfortune in even the smallest storm has made Holiday Isle the go-to place for the regional and national media when they want to beam Mother Nature’s wrath to the world’s stage.

Is this really what we want to be known for?

We had a brief flash of hope when Gov. Charlie Crist visited in August, a day after Tropical Storm Claudette took another bite out of our beaches. On a tour of Jetty East, one of Destin’s oldest condos and the poster child for the erosion problem, Crist vowed to assist the area: “We’ve got to have some beach reconstruction, that’s very clear to me,” he said.

But months later when Ida came knocking no help had arrived, and all we could do was watch horrified as a part of Destin drowned.

In fact we are now in an even deeper quagmire. Searching for an emergency berm, it seemed a sensible solution when a group of Holiday Isle homeowners sought sand from the soon-to-be-dredged harbor.

But a small group of Okaloosa Island condo owners blocked that plan. After months of complaining that they neither needed nor wanted sand, these same owners successfully convinced state bureaucrats that sand dredged from East Pass was rightfully theirs.

Now comes Ida and a damage bill in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We have long maintained that this should not be a zero sum game.

So to those who stand in the way with a not-one-grain-of-sand mentality, we ask that you look at the Ida damage photos online at thedestinlog.com and consider the human misery they represent. When you are done tell us online your solution — or confirm our suspicions that there can be no compromise.

You may think you are holding all the cards now, but Mother Nature is the dealer in this dangerous game and she can stack the deck.

Holiday Isle and Destin were the big loser this time around. Next time it might be Okaloosa Island.

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To read our sister paper's take on the issue, click here.