It is true that Mother Nature will heal the Earth from many forms of damage that are done. It may be it takes a couple years, other cases it takes a couple thousand years.

However, as responsible citizens of this planet, I think we should help out in ways that we know won’t prove detrimental in the future. Perhaps in the case of forest fires, containing the fire, rather than putting them out or preventing them in the first place. (I know that this fire in particular got out of hand, and it was a desperate situation for a while.)

For example, years ago in MA, the parks department came to the decision that one of the State forests was over grown. It was a seriously old growth forest and a forest fire would have devastated not only the forest, but also many of the towns in the area. So, they opened it up for controlled logging to civilians. (Meaning not big companies) Prospective lumberjacks would sign up and take a class on controlled logging and were monitored by the rangers. From what I recall, the program was a success.

Whether the tree hugging eco-mentalists like it or not, Humans live on Earth. A lot of Humans. We owe it to our home and to Mother Nature to help out where we can. Because whether the root cause of a “natural” event is truly natural or the root is sourced to humans, subsequent events Mommy Nature throws at us will make living here really hard.

UPDATE: Here’s the story, copied and recopied on the internet in numerous places:

“According to Professor Steven Frautschi, a colleague of Feynman, Feynman was the only person in the Altadena region to buy flood insurance after the massive 1978 fire, predicting correctly that the fire’s destruction would lead to land erosion, causing mudslides and flooding. The flood occurred in 1979 after winter rains and destroyed multiple houses in the neighborhood.”

BONUS: Here’s the story as retold by a scraper who modified the text – possibly through multiple translations – to avoid getting caught:

“Based on data from Prof Steven Frautschi, a colleague of Feynman, Feynman was a exclusively individual in a Altadena vicinity to purchase flood insurance when the massive 1978 fire, predicting right that the fire’s destruction would lead to erosion, stimulating mudslides and swollen. Noah & the flood occurred within 1979 fallowing wintertime rains and destroyed multiple houses in the front yard.”

This can put a world of hurt on some popular summer tourism spots – that nice, cool, forested summer getaway that’s normally a three hour drive from Phoenix may take three times as long to get by the fastest detour.

Nick,

We have 100 and 500 floodplains in the costal areas of Texas. Every 20 of so years, a hurricane reminds of that fact [we don’t reach the 100 year level, but it comes close). Some areas reached the 100 year level during hurricane Ike Even with mother nature’s reminders, some idiots still build at sea level.

My house is at a outrageous height of 22 feet above sea level.

As far as building on a floodplain, or in a canyon, or on fill in an earthquake zone (I’m looking at you, San Francisco) — the root of the problem is humans have a much, much shorter memory than geology does. The plain might flood only every hundred years, but that’s long enough that nobody alive has experienced it. Hard to keep policy based on such timescales.

Worth considering at any rate.

There is no way I would ever by a house on a hillside with stilts here. Lots of people do though. I bet they’re the same people who think they can live in San Diego County and not maintain an evacuation kit.

I see them as ridges too. If you flip the image vertically though they look like canyons. It’s the same optical illusion that makes craters look like pancakes depending on where the light is coming from in the pic!

. . . Boulder, which sits on what is essentially a flood plain

Erm … well, I think I see your problem.

I recall some flooding a few years ago in the UK, and the TV news crews were interviewing some residents of Gloucester who lived in a new housing development called Meadow Close. They were complaining about how little the city council was doing for them, and none of the televised interviewees spotted that the name of the development was a whopping big clue.

On a separate occasion, the town of Tewkesbury was especially hard hit by flooding (this would have been in either ’07 or ’08), and I don’t recall anyone being particularly whiny about it. Tewkesbury sits at the confluence of the Severn (which I think is England’s second- or third- largest river) and the Avon (Shakespeare’s Avon, as opposed to any of the three other River Avons in the UK). The lock between the two rivers is permanently manned, and the lock-keeper’s house is on 6-foot stilts (you can actually walk under the house as long as you are not too tall), but on this occasion he had to be rescued because the water levels rose so fast that his boat got stuck underneath the house and he could not get it out (it was jammed by its own bouyancy and the water level).

Tewkesbury has been there for about 1000 years (the abbey there celebrated its 950th anniversary about 20 or 30 years ago), and several of the buildings on the High Street are about 350 years old. After the floods, the cleaning up.

If you really want to escape all natural disasters: Come to my hometown in Germany. There is really nothing to fear. No earthquakes, no hurricanes, no tornadoes, even no really severe thunderstorms. A few kilometres away the world can go down in flood and fire, but where I grew up there will be nothing!

So, I hope Boulder and you will both make it through.
Btw: Where exactly can we find your place on that pictures?

And as for floods, Boulder has a long history. Here are some photographs of the “Great Boulder Flood of 1894.” http://bcn.boulder.co.us/basin/gallery/flood1894.html

Stay optimistic; I’m sure everything will be fine.