France demolishes beach apartments and relocates residents due to rising sea levels
When it was built at the end of the 1960s on one of France's most glorious Atlantic coastlines, the beach was over 200 metres away. Today, the hulk of the 80-flat Le Signal apartment block perches precariously on a dune just metres from the water and local authorities are tearing it down before it tumbles. With beaches disappearing at a rate of about 2.5 metres per year in past decades, Soulac-sur-Mer has suffered some of the fastest coastal erosion in France. By 2010, the ocean was lapping at the dune on which Le Signal was built. In 2014, the local government decided to relocate the building's inhabitants and began the long process of expropriation and removing asbestos before starting demolition earlier this month.
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