$700,000 Home on Cliff Destroyed

Wanna build your dream home on a cliff overlooking a really nice lake? You might want to think twice, especially if it's a cliff overlooking Lake Whitney in Texas, about 55 miles south of Fort Worth.

Robert and Denise Webb bought the 4,000-square-foot home back in 2012 when it was only 5 years old, and they planned to leave it to their grandchildren. However, a few weeks ago they started noticing large cracks in the walls. An inspection by local officials revealed chunks of both the cliff and the home were falling into Lake Whitney. The house was condemned and the Webbs removed their personal items and relocated.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was called in and they recommended three options for removing the home from the site before it fell into the lake. The first option was to wrap the home with a large net and then try to pull it away from the edge of the 75-foot cliff, so that the debris could be safely removed from the site. That option was determined not to be feasible, leading engineers to consider the second option — burning the home to the ground. Officials did consider a third option: Letting Mother Nature eventually claim the home through landslides. That would have involved the expense of removing debris from the lake which made it the most expensive option.

So, the other day at about 10 a.m. workers could be seen bringing three bales of hay into the garage along with a gallon of gasoline. They then began breaking out windows and partially knocking holes in some walls to help the fire spread. The hay was then saturated with the gas and scattered around the inside of the garage before being lit at about 11:45 a.m. After only a few minutes, flames had overtaken the garage and smoke was visibly spewing from the eaves. An hour after the fire was started, most of the home had been consumed by the fire. Spectators in dozens of boats witnessed the demolition from a safe distance.

"You know, that's my life there that we're watching fall off," Robert Webb said the day before the demolition. Geologists and inspectors had told them before they purchased the land that the property was perfectly stable, "and so we bought it in good faith," Webb said. "It's really tough, that house was special and I don't even know why it was so special but it was special to me," Denise Webb said.

"You hear about landslides happening in California," said Kari Poole, who lives in nearby Whitney. "But not in Texas. Not on Lake Whitney. Not where you live."