Question: Will the Santiago Fire dissuade people from buying in Portola Springs and Orchard Hills?

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skeptic_IHB

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<p>My wife really likes PS and would like us to buy there when prices drop. But after we had to pack our things to prepare for evacuation on Sunday night (we live at Irvine Blvd and the 261), she doesn't like PS so much anymore.</p>

<p>What does everybody think?</p>

<p>Has anybody been up there to assess the damage? I've seen the OCFA map, but does anybody have first person info?</p>
 
We like Orchard Hills, but that is directly in the firepath. I'm sure by the time it's built-out the memory of the fires will have waned. However, I'm not so sure that OH is worth the "premium" TIC is touting. I guess will have to wait and see what new housing products will be available. Looking at the proposed housing tracts and map it still seems rather dense even though they are saying the complete opposite.



I NEVER would have though communities like Northwood or even Northpark would have been a fire hazard. I guess once OH is built out then NW and NP would be buffered by the newer homes. The same would hold true if the fire started south of the 405 and endangered Quail Hill, Laguna Hills, Newport Coast, etc. I think anywhere where we have large open spaces of preserved wildlands there's a risk of fire, floods, and mudslides.
 
<p>Bkshopr wrote about defensible space a while back. He cited communities like PS being vulnerable with access through the back side such as the Toll 241 where people can attack the community . He is right about carefully choosing locations with safety in mind. I remembered a year ago a fire was deliberately set on a vehicle to destroy a body on the 241 resulted a huge fire up by Orange that some homes were in fire danger. Now is another case of arson accessed by public road that caused this fire at the back side of residential communities. Wow! the theory of good feng shui and defensible space cited by Bk really made sense. </p>
 
<p>I live in PS. We evacuated on Sunday night, and I drove back up there last night to get more of our belongings. In terms of damage, there is nothing of note in the actual neighborhood. The flames came right up to the 261 and Portola Parkway, very close to the homes in the section of PS closest to the 261. There were no flames on that side of the community as of last night. If the winds were blowing in a different direction on Sunday night (in the direction they are currently blowing), the flames would have come right over the ridgeline towards PS instead of towards the Tustin area. I can tell you, had that occured it would have been very, very ugly. All the homes on the North side of Portola parkway would have been in big trouble. The homes on the south side of Portola Parkway would have been slightly more protected due to the parkway.</p>

<p>Last night the flames were on the other side of PS, right on the corner of Modjeska and Irvine Blvd, across from El Toro. </p>

<p>Only real "damage" so to speak is lots of ashes and soot everywhere. </p>
 
<p><em>>>We like Orchard Hills, but that is directly in the firepath</em></p>

<p>Twice now. There was also the fire that started next to the 261 because of a hot auto part falling on dry grass. While I don't think that fire made an incursion into the graded portions of OH, it was very close by. The thing that still concerns me the most about OH is that for many of the individual neighborhoods, from the map it appeas that there is only one road for ingress/egress. If a fire blocked your one exit, you're going out on foot, possibly over unpaved terrain. </p>

<p>The same appears to be true for the entire village of Laguna Crossing. Can you imagine trying to get the residents of 4,000 homes out through one exit? But the cost of adding another entrance/exit is too high we have been told.</p>
 
Laguna Crossing seems to be divided into North and South communities. Each has it's own entrance / exit but so far it's just one per community. North will have about 500 residences, while the South has less than 200. Even OH with 4000+ units only has Culver that loops through the community.
 
I can't help but wonder if the insurance money will be enough for folks to rebuild in northern San Diego. When I owned, I never checked to see if I had enough insurance. My guess is there are alot of folks out there like me. Can you imagine what it must be to owe money on a mortgage and not have a house to even live in, and maybe not even get enough from insurance to rebuild. This is awful.
 
I bet nearly 99% don't have enough insurance. The cost to remove all the wreckage, assess foundation and grading damage, get architecture plans, permits, contractors, etc will be waaay more than people think. I think our original homeowners were based on the builder's assessment on our property taxes. It's highly unlikely that I could get my building costs that low. Not only that but the land residual will likely get wiped, as well as comps in the neighborhood for awhile. Plus you'll have to live somewhere while the rebuilding takes place.





Stuff like this makes me glad I have all my documents scanned and stored in multiple locations and on different media (DVD's and LTO2 backup tapes). the LTO backup tapes to store the hundreds of GB's of digital pictures of my kids. I'm sure a lot of insurance companies will find ways to not pay out or reduce what they pay out.
 
I'll just stick to your original question on whether the fires would dissuade someone from choosing PS or OH --- and give that a resounding YES. I had been looking forward to OH since we first starting hearing about it (and quietly hoping that TIC will come to their senses on pricing by the time they start building). The two fires in the last couple of months that threatened the OH area have been very alarming. Alarming to the point that resale in Northpark is looking a whole lot better regardless of what OH pricing settles out at.
 
how would rebuilding work in regards to the HOA and community guidelines? i can imagine that being a nightmare. would you be required to rebuild exactly in the same way? what if i change the color on the shutters of the rebuild? here's another potential hitch -- what if the original homebuilder went under?





i wonder if this is specified anywhere in sales contracts or community guidelines.
 
Interestingly, the very things that BK cited as bad features of Woodbury may in fact be good features in terms of natural disaster evacuation. BK's analysis focused on 6 main areas:





1. 4 high volume vehicular arterials. Having 4 major areas of entry/exit lets rapists in, but allows easier flow of evaluation in an emergency. Contrast this with Oak Creek or Northwood II with only 2 exit points...





2. Large size. Larger population pool may promote higher cooperation and better funded emergency plans (I'm stretching on this one...but there's a reasonable argument that there's a correlation between disaster preparedness plans and the size/scope of an HOA...)





4. Major road alignment. Being so close to four major roads is bad because it lets all the riff-raff in, but when evacuating (presumably to the 5/405), it's nice to have two major streets take you there (Sand Canyon and Jeffrey) instead of 1.





5. Community without a back. See #1. Although there's a feeling of safety by backing a hill/mountain, not backing to a hill full of dried foliage means less chance of fire danger...





6. Toll road 241 above the back of the community, while promoting noise, actually serves as a nice fire break.





I suppose it's all a game of risk. What do you value more? Not letting the "bad" people in your community, or letting you escape out quickly in case of emergency? There's no right/wrong answer on this one, but it does underscore the pros/cons to various design elements in the villages...





Thoughts?





-OCR
 
<p>Good points on easy evacuation routes, OCR. Thanks a lot --- now I need to reconcile worries about getting out of a neighborhood quick with my previous biggest fear --- speeding cars in a neighborhood. I have always leaned heavily toward a gated community because of the traffic issues more than anything else. I was hit by a car when I was a kid, and lay at night worry about my own child. I know that even with gates you end up with jackasses who insist on speeding through residential streets and running stop signs --- but just by my observations it seems that traffic (and therefore the sheer number of jackasses) is cut way down in a gated community. So I love that people have a hard time getting in, but now am starting to think the reverse might be true --- and it could be a problem if everyone wants to get out at once.</p>
 
<p>The Portola Springs Fall Festival set for this weekend has been cancelled. Shocking that.</p>

<p>From the e-mail:</p>

<p>









Portola Springs Event Cancelled This Weekend







<img height="1" alt="" width="50" src="http://www.interactivate.com/irvine/portolasprings/images/spacer.gif" />






Dear [Redacted],





Thank you for your interest in The Portola Springs Fall Festival.





We are passing along this communication to inform you that The Portola Springs Fall Festival event scheduled for this weekend is being cancelled due to poor air quality caused by the fires in the area.





We will provide you with updated information as to when this event will be rescheduled. Thank you for your consideration and, of course, our thoughts are with the families affected by the fires









</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Yes, definitely because of the poor air quality. I wonder if the less than ideal surrounding view played a part. All of the marketing emphasis on the availablity of nearby wildland outdoor activities is probably out for awhile, I suspect.</p>
 
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-saved24oct24,1,6328214.story?coll=la-headlines-california">Good story in the LA Times</a> regarding building standards and fire safety. Portola Springs and Northwood, among others, are used as examples of newer construction practices.
 
I checked out PS several times. The conclusions I drew at the time were :



a. If I were to consider PS, I will only consider the area west of Portola road.



b. The east side of the community ( where the Richmond America Tract sits) in my opinion doesn't provide a nice and peaceful surrounding. Yes, it has a background of hills, but the freeway and its huge supporting piles are overwhelming.



Now after the fire, the east side of the community is absolutely out of the question. I guess in order to convice yourself the fire risk is worth it, there has to be some reward, ie. nice view, super nice lot, much cheaper than rest of the irvine etc. The additional risk at the east side of the PS community provides ZERO additional reward vs. other communities in Irvine. So why take the risk?
 
<p>And the taxes are far too high. </p>

<p>More importantly, you can't get a mortgage if you can't get insurance. Time and time again, we see insurers dropping existing policies and not writing new ones after large dollar disasters. We're going to go from a credit crunch to an insurance crunch. Hoo boy. This won't be good for new sales.</p>
 
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