The "hurricane-proof" domes of Florida's landmark Cape Romano dome house were already in trouble when Ted Cushman wrote about them in JLC back in 2009. Shifting sands and erosion had altered the shoreline so that the concrete domes - which once stood about 200 yards from shore when they were built in the early 1980s - were now at water's edge.
Sporadic efforts to stabilize the shoreline and perhaps relocate the domes shifted toward transforming the doomed structure into a marine sanctuary after Hurricane Irma in 2017 collapsed a couple of them. Finally, Hurricane Ian in September 2022 finished the job. Now, only the top of one of the domes is visible above the water at low tide, while the rest of these unique structures have become underwater habitat for the local marine population.
