Landslides in mountains (homes, neighborhood, buying)

[CCorcione]

A recent post was referencing landslides and I started reading about them. Are there certain areas to stay away from or are all areas a concern. I saw alot of articles about the landslides that occured after the hurricane(s) came through a few years ago. Yikes!

[chickenista]

Most of the landslides.. ok.. let me rephrase that...
The mountains here have been standing forever and very rarely come down on their own. There are trees and huge rocks and lush undergrowth that hold the mountains together.
It is only when people begin to doze the moutain sides and put in roads and terrace the slopes for homes that the delicate structure that holds it all together is weakened and the mountains come down.
As long as you are in an area that is mainly undisturbed and do not try to live hanging off of the side of the mountain or living below folks who are hanging on the side of the mountain you are quite safe.
All in all, the mountains are a pretty safe place to live. The storms aren't but so bad as the mountains rip the storms apart as they cross them. You won't get tornadoes and it very rarely snows very deep.. 96 or 97 was the last "blizzard" of several feet and that was a fluke.

Hint: natives never live at the top of the mountains, we live in the lush valleys and hollers.. the mountain tops are windy and brutally cold in the winter, very rarely is there a good water supply without drilling very deeply.. all of the good topsoil is washed down into the valleys and hollers... we just smile as new folks move to the tops and truck in topsoil.. we know it will be down in our yards in a year or two..

[Asheville Native]

Originally Posted by chickenista

we just smile as new folks move to the tops and truck in topsoil.. we know it will be down in our yards in a year or two..

.... and basements, and streets, and streams, ponds, and lakes, so I don't smile.

Landslides in this part of the world are man made, through arrogance and ignorance. The natural trees, vegetation, duff and loam do a great job of controlling run off from even the heaviest rains.

As stated above, the people with common sense live in the valleys, coves, and hollers.

[CCorcione]

Is there certain areas I should stay away from or should I be able to trust the realtor when I express my concern?

TIA

[Mozart271]

I know this doesn't answer your question, but Mark Twain wrote a hilarious chapter in "Roughing It" about a farmer whose land was on a hill above another farmer's land. When a landslide happened, they had a big conflagration over who now owned the bottomland!

Good luck!

[chickenista]

Just look at what you are buying... if it is a new neighborhood stuck on the side of a mountain where the foundation is greatly exposed on the downhill side and there are huge scars on the mountainside and the trees have been removed for better views... don't buy it!!!!
Instead.. look for an older home without too many neighbors that is built WITH the lay of the land or, even better, a nice older home in a nice little valley that needs some love and rehabilitation to once again be a happy home.

[jstubbspt]

During the floods of 2004 a mountain top let loose and slid down a tributary of the Cullasaja river covering a small community and killing a number of people. If we get enough rain landslides do happen here. I can think of two other areas where there were major land slides during those floods one in Curtis Creek area of Pisgah National Forest and another that washed out part of the trail to Rufus Morgan falls in the Nantahala national forest photos of which can be seen here:

Rufus Morgan Falls

I hope all of these mountain top developments don't add to the problems next time we get a tropical storm over the mountains (which we do get fairly regularly during normal years), but I'm afraid the out of state developers who flocked to the mountains haven't taken this into consideration. The only thing that matter to them is the "million dollar" view and the money they can make from those views. Hope we don't have any million dollar trophy homes sliding down the mountain sides any time soon.