Coastal Insurance in Misquamicut, RI: What Is Actually Confirmed

Geography: A Narrow Sandbar Between a Pond and the Open Ocean

Per Wikipedia, the Misquamicut CDP covers just 1.25 square miles total — 1.17 square miles of land and 0.075 square miles of water, about 6% water. It sits on a barrier beach/sandbar along the Atlantic-facing southern shore of the Town of Westerly, with Winnapaug Pond, a saltwater lagoon, immediately behind it to the north. That is about as direct an open-ocean exposure as a residential beach strip gets: a thin strip of sand with the Atlantic on one side and a tidal pond on the other, and it is the single biggest reason flood and wind coverage here deserve more attention than they would further inland.

Misquamicut is a census-designated place and fire district within the Town of Westerly — it has never been an incorporated town of its own. Residents and property owners are governed by, and pay taxes to, the Town of Westerly, while the separately-taxing Misquamicut Fire District provides local fire and rescue service. That structural fact does not change the insurance picture below, but it matters for who you would call about permits, flood-related building code questions, or storm-preparedness resources tied to this specific stretch of beach.

The 1938 and 1944 Hurricanes: The Original Community, Destroyed and Rebuilt

By 1938, what was then called Pleasant View had grown into a genuine resort community along Atlantic Avenue — per Westerly Sun reporting citing local historian Don Gentile, "two rows of cottages and a street in between," running down to the Misquamicut Club's own beach cottage. The Great New England Hurricane of September 21, 1938 destroyed it. Conservationist Chaplin Bradford Barnes has stated that, unlike the Watch Hill cottages that were swept out to sea that same day, Misquamicut's houses were most likely buried in sand rather than washed away — a distinct way this particular stretch of barrier beach absorbed the storm. Concrete stairs that once led up to those pre-1938 cottages remain partly buried today and are exposed at extreme low tides, nicknamed the "stairs to nowhere" in Westerly Sun coverage — a physical, present-day trace of that destruction.

A second major hurricane struck in 1944, compounding the damage to whatever had been rebuilt after 1938. Per Rhode Island's own state parks history page, "in 1938, 1944, and 1954 just about every structure along the beach was flattened, washed out to sea, or damaged" — three storms in sixteen years, not one isolated event.

Hurricane Carol, 1954: The "Cars Buried at the Andrea Hotel" Photograph

Hurricane Carol struck on August 31, 1954, and per Wikipedia produced a storm surge up to 14.4 feet in Narragansett Bay — surpassing even the 1938 storm's surge — and caused roughly $200 million in damage statewide (1954 dollars), destroying 620 houses and 83 other buildings and killing at least 17 people across Rhode Island. In Westerly specifically, roughly 200 homes were washed away. A widely reproduced historical photograph shows cars buried in sand at the Andrea Hotel on Misquamicut Beach after Carol — a real, dateable image of the storm's severity on this exact stretch of beach. The Andrea itself, a guest house dating to 1912, still operates today as a Misquamicut restaurant.

The cumulative toll of 1938, 1944, and Carol led Governor Dennis J. Roberts to begin condemnation proceedings for a roughly mile-long stretch of the devastated, privately held beachfront, which opened to the public as Misquamicut State Beach in 1959. That a state government judged this shoreline too storm-damaged and too risky to leave in private hands is itself a data point worth sitting with when thinking about insurance costs here.

Superstorm Sandy and the Army Corps Restoration, 2012-2014

Superstorm Sandy caused significant erosion at Misquamicut State Beach in October 2012. The state placed roughly 30,000 cubic yards of sand back onto the shoreline as an emergency measure, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers then ran a federally funded erosion-control project — funded under the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013 — that placed approximately 90,000 cubic yards of sand to restore the beach to its authorized design profile. That project was completed by May 23, 2014. The Corps' own public notice framed the purpose as protecting public infrastructure and the evacuation route along the beach, and mitigating backshore flooding in future coastal storms — not simply widening the beach for recreation.

Ongoing Erosion and an Unresolved, Unfunded Nourishment Proposal

Erosion has continued to be a live, current problem here, not a closed chapter. Per Turn to 10 and Westerly Sun reporting, sand and storm damage regularly wash into Atlantic Avenue's streets even during comparatively minor rainstorms, across a roughly three-mile developed shoreline that contains an estimated 218 homes and 50 businesses. Caswell Cooke, Executive Director of the Misquamicut Business Association, has advocated for a large-scale nourishment project — pitched to the Westerly Town Council in May 2024 and presented to state legislators in February 2025 — that would extend the shoreline roughly 200 feet seaward by dredging offshore sand. The estimated cost is $8-10 million per mile across three miles, roughly $24-30 million total, with the Army Corps expected to cover about two-thirds if the project is authorized.

As of the most recent reporting found in this research, early 2025, that project remained a proposal — not funded, not under construction, and dependent on a congressional authorization and Army Corps feasibility process that Cooke himself has said could take as long as four years. If you are evaluating property here now, treat the shoreline's protection level as what exists today, not what a still-unfunded future project might eventually provide, and check for any 2026 update on the project's status before assuming otherwise.

Flood Insurance (NFIP): What This History Should Tell You to Ask

This research did not find a specific, sourced FEMA flood-zone designation or NFIP premium figure for any particular parcel in Misquamicut, and this page will not invent one — a barrier-beach address here could plausibly fall in a high-risk V or A zone given the geography above, but only a parcel-specific FEMA flood-map pull can actually tell you that. What this page can tell you is why that check matters more here than in many other places: a beach that was leveled by hurricanes in 1938, 1944, and 1954, that required a 90,000-cubic-yard federal restoration after Sandy in 2012-2014, and that is still eroding enough today to need a proposed $24-30 million nourishment project is a beach with a documented, repeated flood history, not a theoretical one.

If a mortgage lender requires flood insurance on a Misquamicut property, that is itself a strong signal about the parcel's flood-zone designation. Either way, pull the current flood-zone designation directly from FEMA's Flood Map Service Center (msc.fema.gov) for the specific address, and get a written NFIP flood-insurance quote — and ask specifically whether the parcel's elevation and the beach's erosion history affect the quoted rate — before assuming any cost.

Windstorm Coverage: A Separate Policy Question From Flood

Flood damage from storm surge and wind damage from a hurricane are typically covered by two different types of coverage — standard NFIP flood insurance covers rising water, while wind damage is usually addressed through a homeowners policy's windstorm coverage, often with a separate, percentage-based hurricane or named-storm deductible in coastal Rhode Island rather than a flat dollar deductible. Given that this exact beach has documented wind and surge damage together in 1938, 1944, and 1954, and erosion-driven exposure continuing today, a Misquamicut buyer should confirm with a licensed agent, in writing, exactly which named-storm deductible applies, whether wind coverage is bundled into a standard homeowners policy or requires a separate wind/hurricane policy, and whether the insurer treats barrier-beach or oceanfront-facing parcels differently from those set back toward Winnapaug Pond.

This research did not find a specific, current windstorm premium or deductible percentage for Misquamicut, and none should be assumed here. Coastal Rhode Island insurers and the state's own FAIR Plan (the insurer of last resort for hard-to-place coastal risks) can vary significantly by exact location, construction, and elevation — another parcel-specific question for a licensed agent, not something a market-wide page can responsibly quote.

What This Page Cannot Tell You — Confirm Directly Before You Buy

To restate it plainly: this page can confirm Misquamicut's barrier-beach geography (1.25 square miles total CDP, separating Winnapaug Pond from the Atlantic), its documented storm history (1938, 1944, and 1954 hurricanes; the 2012 Sandy erosion and 2012-2014 Army Corps restoration; the ongoing, unresolved erosion and nourishment proposal as of early 2025), and its status as a fire district and village within the Town of Westerly, not a separate town. It cannot confirm a flood-zone designation, an NFIP premium figure, or a current windstorm deductible for any individual parcel, because none of those were found in a form specific and sourced enough to publish here — and this page will not guess at one.

Before making a purchase or insurance decision on any Misquamicut property, pull the current flood-zone designation for that specific parcel directly from FEMA's Flood Map Service Center, and get a written flood-insurance and homeowners/windstorm-insurance quote from a Rhode Island-licensed insurance agent for that exact address. Nothing on this page is insurance, legal, or financial advice.