Sheriff Maketa and Black Forest Fire Chief Harvey

[screagle2]

For you Monky, back in your tree

Stupid was a poor choice of wording. Tis really about how much risk you accept. Choosing to live in the woods with a house that burns is a risk. Choosing to live on the plains with a hoiuse that can blow away is a risk.

Make your choices and live with them. Your house burns down in a forest fire don't complain about fire protection. Your house in a flood plain washes away don't complain about levees.

Exactly!

[Ronin13]

Unfortunately, I see that as the not-so-distant future for all mountain/rural homes. It'll be a home for the rich. You'll either have to self insure or pay really high premiums.

What will happen in the mean time, is all the high risks will be funneled to a company or two that's willing to take the gamble. One more fire and they'll experience the most pay out and then that company or companies will move out of that market. They'll just try to make hay in the meantime to offset the potential pay out.

Just my $.02 on it. I've always wanted to live in the mountains/forest but working in insurance has given me new light on it, unfortunately.

That's not very realistic- otherwise communities like Evergreen, Conifer, Bailey, Pine, most of Morrison, etc would disappear overnight. The real problem isn't living in the forest, it's mitigation. If people would stop being so idiotic and actually do some fire mitigation (like clearing trees from around your house, trimming up the trees outside the buffer zone, and cleaning up your damn property of all that slash) it wouldn't be as bad. Granted, a really bad fire, no amount of mitigation can save the homes, but it would give the owners somewhat of a fighting chance. The real problem with all these fires and their destructiveness is attributed to urbanization. We've become so spoiled that we no longer allow nature to do it's natural cycle of burn and grow back. Some areas of Colorado haven't burned in almost 100 years, so the growth has overgrown, and the dead vegetation litters the floor and just waits for a spark to send it into a raging inferno. There is no real feasible way to get into some of the dense wooded areas to clean them up, and people are so up in arms that we have to put the fires out ASAP instead of letting the natural thing happen to where it burns then grows back. We've severed the natural cycle, hence why these fires are so destructive.