RODANTHE, N.C. – Visitors were urged to avoid the beach and stay out of the water in the Rodanthe area after a house washed away in rough surf churned by Hurricane Ernesto.

The National Park Service said debris in the water and along beaches posed a hazard for over a dozen miles from the house that once occupied 23214 Corbina Drive. No one was home at the time it collapsed into the ocean Friday evening, and authorities said that power had been cut off a week earlier.

Chicamacomico Banks Fire & Rescue posted a video to Facebook showing the house drifting away in the surf.

Currents appeared to be carrying debris north, but the park service said that could shift.

Other houses in the area appeared to have been damaged, the park service said.

The house on Corbina is the seventh to collapse along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in the past four years, the park service said.

The low-lying barrier islands are increasingly vulnerable to storm surge and overwash from the Pamlico Sound and the sea as the planet warms. Rising sea levels frustrate efforts to hold properties in place.

Ernesto made landfall early Saturday on the British territory of Bermuda as a category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph.

Its effects were being felt along much of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, with dangerous rip currents forcing public beaches to close during one of the final busy weekends of the summer season.

The rip current risk has been high through the weekend along the North Carolina coast.

A 41-year-old man drowned in a rip current just before 3 p.m. Saturday, Surf City Emergency Management confirmed.

Since Friday there have been at least 42 rip current rescues at North Carolina beaches, with 23 on Saturday at Wrightsville Beach.