Beach Erosion in Old Orchard Beach, Maine: The 2024 Dune Breach and the Rebuild Still Underway

The January 2024 Storm: A Breach at Goosefare Brook

A severe multi-day storm event hit the Maine coast from January 9 to 13, 2024. In Old Orchard Beach, storm surge breached the town's already-eroded dunes near Goosefare Brook, sending water into the Ocean Park neighborhood — the same low-lying, historically distinct area founded in 1880-81 as a Free Will Baptist Chautauqua retreat. More than 75 homes flooded, some taking on as much as four feet of water.

Town Manager Diana Asanza put the storm in context afterward, noting that the damage would have been worse without the dune line that failed: "Those dunes protected hundreds of homes and businesses from more severe flooding." That's a notable admission on its own terms — it means the eroded, aging dune system that breached still did real protective work before it gave way, and that the town's exposure without any dune system at all would have been substantially larger.

The storm's scale was large enough to trigger a federal response: President Biden issued Major Disaster Declaration ME-4764-DR on March 20, 2024, covering eight Maine counties including York County (home to Old Orchard Beach) and authorizing FEMA's Individuals and Households Program along with related recovery assistance, processed through DisasterAssistance.gov and York County Disaster Recovery Centers.

The 2025-2026 Dune Rebuild: Two Phases, Two Beaches

More than a year after the storm, Old Orchard Beach began an active, more-than-$1-million dune restoration project, funded primarily through federal and state disaster assistance. The project runs in two phases, at two different sections of town beach.

Phase 1 targeted the Goosefare Brook area — the exact site of the January 2024 breach — and began the week of January 13, 2026, placing roughly 1,400 cubic yards of sand across about 400 feet of beach to rebuild the dune line that failed. Phase 2 followed the next week at the northern section of town beach, more than half a mile north of the Pier, where crews placed roughly 4,500 cubic yards of sand sourced from a quarry in Dayton, Maine, along with sea-grass planting intended to help the new dunes stabilize and hold.

Town officials have been direct that this project is a repair, not a permanent solution. Sea levels are expected to keep rising, and officials have said more sand will need to be brought in or dredged in the future to keep pace — the town is explicitly preparing for the possibility of a 100-year flood event, not just a repeat of January 2024's storm.

A Separate, Concurrent Story: Old Orchard Beach's Flood Maps

Running alongside the storm-and-rebuild timeline, but functionally distinct from it, is a flood-map update the town was navigating in the same period. Old Orchard Beach's flood insurance rate maps dated to 1984-85, with its floodplain-management ordinance last updated in 1986. FEMA sent a letter dated January 17, 2024 — just before the storm hit — declaring updated flood-hazard determinations final and requiring the town to adopt new maps and a new floodplain ordinance by July 17, 2024 to stay in the National Flood Insurance Program.

The town appealed the initial proposed maps and won a reduction in the extent of some regulated flood zones, along with lower base flood elevations in certain areas — meaning fewer properties ended up newly regulated than FEMA had originally proposed. Anyone evaluating a specific parcel should confirm its current flood-zone status directly with the town rather than assume either the old 1984-85 maps or the original 2024 proposal still apply.

Camp Ellis: A Regional Sediment System, Not an Old Orchard Beach Landmark

Because Old Orchard Beach's roughly seven-mile beach continues south into Saco, it's worth being clear about where OOB's erosion story ends and a neighboring town's begins. Saco's Camp Ellis neighborhood, immediately south of OOB, has its own long-documented, federally studied severe erosion problem, driven by a 19th-century Army Corps of Engineers jetty that redirected sediment flow along Saco Bay. A new jetty project at Camp Ellis began construction with Army Corps and state funding as recently as 2023.

That is Saco's own infrastructure and erosion story, not Old Orchard Beach's — and this page is not describing the Camp Ellis jetty as an OOB landmark. But because Camp Ellis sits on the same Saco Bay sediment system as OOB's own beach, its jetty is a real, well-documented contributing factor in the region's broader sediment patterns. If you're researching erosion causes for the wider Saco Bay area, Camp Ellis's jetty history is relevant regional context — just not evidence of a problem specific to Old Orchard Beach's own beach.

What This Means If You're Evaluating Property Here

Two things should shape how you read Old Orchard Beach's erosion risk. First, the dune line protecting Ocean Park and the town's other low-lying beachfront areas is, as of early 2026, freshly rebuilt rather than long-established — it held once before it breached in January 2024, and the new sand placed in 2026 has not yet been tested by a comparable storm. Second, town officials themselves describe the current rebuild as needing follow-up, not as a finished, permanent fix.

There are real gaps in the public record worth naming rather than papering over. No confirmed account of historical named-hurricane damage to Old Orchard Beach specifically — for example, the 1938 Great New England Hurricane or 1991's Hurricane Bob — turned up in this research; the January 2024 winter storm, not a hurricane, is the strongest documented storm-damage event on record for the town. Similarly, no private-property erosion-rate figures or engineering-study conclusions beyond the town-level dune-rebuild figures above (cubic yards placed, feet of beach covered) were found — if you need a rate of erosion at a specific parcel rather than a town-wide rebuild summary, that figure isn't established here and shouldn't be assumed. Before buying near Old Orchard Beach's oceanfront, ask directly which phase of the dune rebuild (if any) sits in front of a specific parcel, what FEMA flood zone that parcel currently falls in under the town's updated maps, and whether any additional sand or dredging work has been scheduled since the 2026 rebuild. None of this is engineering, insurance, or real estate advice. For a property-specific determination, consult FEMA's Flood Map Service Center at msc.fema.gov, the Town of Old Orchard Beach's own floodplain-management office, and a licensed coastal engineer before making a purchase decision.