Lookout Mountain anyone? (Denver, Golden, Evergreen: HOA fees, house, neighborhoods)

[davidv]

Originally Posted by alliern

I wouldn't let the threat of wildfires be that much of a concern for you.

Really? Because the houses in Waldo Canyon near Colorado Springs were in the foothills (notice the past tense).

So were the homes in High Park.

And closer to Denver, homes have burned near Morrison and Foxton (Lower North Fork Fire), and fires have burned near Golden (Indian Gulch Fire), and Waterton Canyon (Wadsworth Ridge Fire).

In the past 5 years, nearly 1,000 homes in Colorado have burned due to wildfires.

I'd call that a concern.

[cocaseco]

[quote=alliern;30743360]

Originally Posted by cocaseco

Really? Do you live in the foothills like I do? The residents of Evergreen, Conifer, Genesee, Morrison, Pine, etc...enjoy a certain quality of life that most people aren't accustomed to. We do live with the threat of wildfire, but we don't obsess over it on a daily basis.

We have a reverse 911 system in place and we have live police/fire scanners on Pinecam.com - An Electronic Community In The Colorado Rockies. In addition, various neighborhoods have neighborhood alerts. Residents carry the proper homeowners insurance and we have the contents of our homes recorded and documented.

Living in the foothills is no different than living on the coast with the threat of hurricanes. Or living in the path of tornadoes. How about areas prone to mudslides? Earthquakes? Floods? Volcanic activity?

Should we all live in total suburbia where we can hear our neighbors sneeze?

I just left, but yes i did for 30 years. You seem pretty confident, and i certainly don't want to shatter that. Oh, i was also a firefighter for 20 of those years and have worked on some of the biggest fires in our state. I certainly dont want to live in suburbia, but i also decided i didnt want to risk losing everything due to one careless neighbor. However, the biggest issue was after the fire. Your house may have been saved, and then your left with a black and bleak landscape that is flood prone and wont ever regrow in your lifetime. I didnt want to live with that, you might and thats great. 911 system fail as we have seen over and over. You also have great fire departments and mitigation efforts, but in reality, fire departments dont stop large wildland fires that are wind driven in dry and hot and conditions. It ALWAYS takes a change in the weather to start to tip the scales in control of a fire, always. If your house is saved, it is largely luck and timing. Yes you can insure everything...for now. but what do you do when the insurance companies stop? Imagine your dream home and all your lifetime of posessions, and you can no longer insure...do you think you can sell then? Your analogy of other disaters is irrelevant as the OP is only asking about fire danger. However, each of those has their own issues and level of acceptability.

[alliern]

Originally Posted by davidv

Really? Because the houses in Waldo Canyon near Colorado Springs were in the foothills (notice the past tense).

So were the homes in High Park.

And closer to Denver, homes have burned near Morrison and Foxton (Lower North Fork Fire), and fires have burned near Golden (Indian Gulch Fire), and Waterton Canyon (Wadsworth Ridge Fire).

In the past 5 years, nearly 1,000 homes in Colorado have burned due to wildfires.

I'd call that a concern.

I am well aware of the fires that have been in Colorado over the past 5 years. I have lived in the state in the foothills for that long.

When you do the math, there are just over 2,00,000 households in Colorado and the 1000 homes that burned were just 0.0005% of the number of homes in CO. Someone has a better chance of getting hit by a drunk driver or while crossing an intersection in Denver.

I just don't understand why everyone on this board is so quick to say that living in the foothills is asking for your house to burn to the ground.

Why don't people talk about the high rate of suicide in Douglas County? If you move there you have a good chance you might off yourself?

Seriously...it's really getting old.

Are all Coloradoans supposed to live in big box builder subdivisions with 6ft. Privacy fences between their lots because the house next door is guaranteed to never burn down?

[davidv]

Originally Posted by alliern

I am well aware of the fires that have been in Colorado over the past 5 years. I have lived in the state in the foothills for that long.

When you do the math, there are just over 2,00,000 households in Colorado and the 1000 homes that burned were just 0.0005% of the number of homes in CO. Someone has a better chance of getting hit by a drunk driver or while crossing an intersection in Denver.

I just don't understand why everyone on this board is so quick to say that living in the foothills is asking for your house to burn to the ground.

Why don't people talk about the high rate of suicide in Douglas County? If you move there you have a good chance you might off yourself?

Seriously...it's really getting old.

Are all Coloradoans supposed to live in big box builder subdivisions with 6ft. Privacy fences between their lots because the house next door is guaranteed to never burn down?

You can delude yourself into thinking that you are perfectly safe, but we are talking about the threat of wildfires here, not fire.

There are about 2,000,000 homes in Colorado, but most people live in the cities on the Front Range. There are only about 20,000 homes in the foothills of the Front Range. Three fires in the last two years (High Park, Black Forest, and Waldo Canyon) burned slightly more than 1,100 homes. That is a burn rate of slightly more than 5%. If the average chance of a person's house burning down is 1 in 16,000, then the stats for the foothills (1.1 in 20) is much higher.

[alliern]

Since this back and forth argument can go on forever, I am going to end this on my end. The OP actually said she/he wasn't concerned about fires. Sorry for having your thread high jacked and turned into something else!

[woob]

[quote=alliern;30743360]

Originally Posted by cocaseco

Living in the foothills is no different than living on the coast with the threat of hurricanes. Or living in the path of tornadoes. How about areas prone to mudslides? Earthquakes? Floods? Volcanic activity?

The difference is that if you live in the midwest, you MIGHT get struck by a tornado. But if you live in the forests of Colorado, your land WILL burn eventually. That is what forests do here. Same can be said for living in a flood zone in new orleans or miami.

[Mary Go Round]

Just to play devil's advocate (and this is part of our thinking on not being concerned about fire) - you have to look at the risk of loss OVER TIME. The question is not whether Lookout Mountain may suffer from a fire, the question is when. I need the house to last 30 years. If it burns after I'm dead, I don't care, personally anyway. So the odds question is Will my home burn in my lifetime? And the odds of that are not 1:20. In fact, the odds of a fire in any location in the Colorado Rockies over a few hundred years is probably 100%. I only care about the odds for a certain time period.

And there will always be an insurer willing to insure those homes.... for a price. To me it will be worth it. To someone else, obviously not. But I grew up in Tornado Alley and personally know lots of people who lost homes to them. People still choose to live there. Some of them even choose to build

[davidv]

Originally Posted by Mary Go Round

And there will always be an insurer willing to insure those homes.... for a price. To me it will be worth it. To someone else, obviously not. But I grew up in Tornado Alley and personally know lots of people who lost homes to them. People still choose to live there. Some of them even choose to build

Not necessarily. Insurers are actually mandating that homeowners create a 100 foot defensive zone around the house with not trees or shrubs.

For existing homes, there is a period for the homeowner to comply. For new builds, it must be done immediately. After the grace period, homeowners could lose their coverage if they get caught, or insurers could refuse to pay if they can prove that the defensive zone was never created.

[Mary Go Round]

David I read your article and did a little further investigating. Here is a part of an article that quotes Angela Thorpe, spokesperson for State Farm, in response to the article you cited:

"As for the prospect of clearing everything within 100 feet of a house, Thorpe stressed that each property is evaluated "on a case-by-case basis" and mitigation recommendations vary widely by specific properties. She said such a recommendation would be extreme and rare and cautioned customers to wait and see what their inspectors tell them.

"We don't want everyone to start mowing down everything within 100 feet of their homes," she said. "We really want the areas within 30 to 50 feet of their homes to be really tight. We want to eliminate the fuels closest to the house. It's the first 30 feet surrounding the home that requires the most extensive mitigation. "The 100-foot area is more about cutting limbs and thinning trees.""

And again, statistically I'm playing a fairly safe game. The odds of SOMEONE'S house burning in the foothills/mountains of Colorado is pretty darn high - as I said, probably 100%. The odds of MY particular house being burned up is very low.

[mic111]

If you build in an area that has recently burned then I'd say your good on odds. But if your build in an area with beetle killed trees or alot of timber than there is a pretty good chance with our recent drought you won't be as lucky as you believe. The discussions around the fires always point out that mitigation is almost worthless. With our high winds the fires jump miles at a time. But some people do insist on living there so we all get to watch their faces as their houses burn, the firefighters risk their lives to try and save structures and the $s spent to fight the fire whereas if the homes weren't there they would just let the forest burn.

On the other hand the realtors LOVE foothills buyers. The ones I know say they are good for 3 or 4 sales. If they move from Denver then there is the sale of their existing house, the purchase of the foothills house, the sale of the foothills house (after a year or two) and the purchase of something in the metro area. If they are from out of state then usually just 3 sales. Bad winters will drive the new foothills owners out as will fire scares. Recently we have had mild winters, drought conditions and lots of wildfires.

Take a look at the listings in the foothills. It isn't that easy to leave. In zillow you will see that the houses are on the market for years. That is not uncommon. I know people who have just left and moved down while their property sat empty for years trying to find a buyer.

I don't mean to pile on but in your OP this was your query.

Originally Posted by Mary Go Round

Thinking about buying OR building in the Lookout Mountain area. Any thoughts, advice, warnings? Anything to look out for on building up there? Thanks in advance for help on this!